An Approach to Assessing Crime Severity

In 1977, the US Department of Justice conducted an interesting auxiliary study as part of the National Crime Victimization Survey. They asked 60,000 people how severe 204 crimes were (each person rated 25 criminal events). Yes, yes, interpersonal utility alert; but let’s go on. On a scale where 10 = “a person steals a bicycle parked on the street”, here are some of the study findings:

0.6 = a person trespasses in the backyard of a private home

1.5 = a person intentionally shoves or pushes a victim. No medical treatment is required.

Nock’s shocking book on education

It is hard to say what is most notable about this book published first in 1931:

1. Albert Jay Nock’s incredible disquisition on the real meaning of education and its role in a free society.

2. That these lectures were given at a university as part of a prestigious Page-Barbour lecture series.

3. That they were delivered at a “public ivy” school: the University of Virginia.

 

Go for Gold

Why, after years of the market’s neglect of gold, is the paper money price of gold now on the rise? Would it be too far-fetched to assume that it could reflect market agents’ growing concern about a forthcoming great inflation of government controlled paper money? Tensions in credit markets might indeed provoke fears that central banks could, by way of lowering interest rates, pump even more credit and money into the economies, in an attempt to fend off a credit crisis and potential losses in output and employment.

Embracing Creative Destruction

Creative destruction (Joseph Schumpeter’s phrase) occurs when innovations — new technologies or business models — demolish the capital structures of well-established industries, industries that have lost the ability to satisfy the urgent wants of consumers. This process can happen almost over night, such as when the vinyl record industry collapsed in the wake of digital music. Or, the process can slowly run its course, similar to the decades-long crumbling of a building’s foundation. Here the process is akin to the way moss attaches to surface imperfections and degrades — over decades — the strength and resilience of concrete.

Greenspan Absolves Himself

Now that Alan Greenspan is no longer the Fed chairman, some financial commentators are daring to suggest that perhaps the present financial crisis is the result of the extremely low interest rate policy of Greenspan’s Fed between December 2000 to June 2004 that fueled the housing bubble. Greenspan denies it on grounds that the Fed has no control over long-term interest rates. While Greenspan is correct that the Fed does not directly manage long-term rates, writes Frank Shostak, it remains true that a main influence on long-term rates is the quantity of money and credit in the economy, a variable that the Fed can directly control through its management of short-term rates. To say otherwise is like claiming that the bathroom flood isn’t your fault, since you only control the faucet, not the height of the water in the tub.

The Postwar Renaissance II: Politics and Foreign Policy

Murray Rothbard discusses the critical turning point in Republican politics: 1946-1950. In the realm of direct politics, it seemed clear that there was only one place for those of us not totally disillusioned with political action: the “extreme right wing” of the Republican Party. It was solidly isolationist and opposed to foreign wars and interventions, and roughly free-market and libertarian in domestic affairs.

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