In a previous article, I showed that the proposals to curb “excessive” speculation in oil futures markets were based on ignorance of how the market coordinates production and consumption over time. In the present article, I will explore the issue of opening up the Arctic National Wilderness Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. We’ll see once again that even friends of the market often don’t fully understand its power to fix problems.
Tom DiLorenzo, in his new book, Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution - And What It Means for Americans Today (see his The Founding Father of Constitutional Subversion), shows how Hamilton helped to subvert the superior (and more libertarian) Jeffersonian interpretation of the Constitution.
Well, how about that? In an interview for Britain’s Daily Telegraph on a lot of other subjects, Antonin Scalia offered, perhaps without invitation, his opinion on the prominence of laws and (hence) lawyers in his country. It’s at the very end of this article, and he notes that law is the major seemingly chosen in college by all of America’s best and brightest.
From this Sunday’s Boston Globe “Ideas” section: Natural Disasters Help
“Natural disasters can give a boost to the countries where they occur – and sometimes, the more the better”
“…When something is destroyed you don’t necessarily rebuild the same thing that you had. You might use updated technology, you might do things more efficiently. It bumps you up,” says Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University. “Disasters help people think about things differently.”
In the 2001 Polish film Quo Vadis, Nero’s minions secretly set fire to Rome to give Nero inspiration for his lousy poetry.
When the Roman citizens, who have lost everything, riot, Petronius, the Roman writer and wit, and also Nero’s courtier, delivers a little speech to the crowd:
“Citizens, the city shall be rebuilt. The gardens or Lucullis, Maecenas, Caesar and Agrippina will be opened.Tomorrow, we shall start distributing wheat, wine, and olives so that each of you fills his belly
(Applause)
