Pens for Hire, Cheap
Two of the most seasoned pros are yours for only the cost of the effort required to understand their arguments. These straight-shooting writers have made that cost minimal. I’m speaking of Paine and Bastiat.
John Perry Barlow’s “The Economy of Ideas: A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age”
John Perry Barlow‘s 1994 Wired article, “The Economy of Ideas: A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age,” tagged: “(Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong.)”, is a classic. Written at the dawn of the Internet, it’s amazing how non-dated it is. It’s a fascinating, well-written, and insightful paper about the problems of applying classical notions of IP to the digital age. A few choice nuggets:
Scroogenomics: The Economics of Holiday Gifts
[Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays • By Joel Waldfogel • Princeton University Press, 2009 • 186 pages]
This little book could have been a great Christmas gift for many of your friends and relatives. It has some neat information about Christmas, and I share the author’s sense that the Christian holiday has been overly commercialized.
The Case for Ebenezer
At the story’s end, Scrooge awakens and begins throwing money out the window. In the mind of Dickens, Scrooge has now justified his existence by abandoning the rational decision making that has made his firm successful.
American Madness
Frank Capra was America’s preeminent filmmaker in the 1930s. He gave moviegoers tales of paper-money fixes for economic problems: Keynesianism with family values.
Fiscal Policy, Redux
The horrors of monetary policy aside, fiscal policy cannot stimulate the economy. As we know, the government has no money of its own. It has only the power to tax and spend the money of others.
The Profit of Reform
The religion of socialism will come into its own, its devotees maintain, only when the devil worship of capitalism is done in. Until that happy day the State will suffer from imperfections.
A Matter of Degree: The New York Subway
A State is a State, now as in the past, regardless of the size of its victim, and regardless of ideology affected by its management. It is always at war with Society.
Stupid 19th-century nostrums like the free market
From an obit for Paul Samuelson. Thanks to his work
No student would ever again rest comfortably with the 19th-century nostrum that private markets would cure unemployment without need of government intervention.
Going Underground
Richard Rahn is one of the few writers out there who keeps up with the underground economy and its size and scope – which is a fantastic thing to do because this is a leading indicator of the status of freedom itself. The larger the state, the larger the underground. A free society has no underground since there is no reason for people who are doing contractually licit things to hide from anyone.
