3/13/05

How strange to find pride of workmanship in this seaside casino where the trick is to get rich without working; unless you consider work the mashing of a red lighted button that says “spin wheel”.

Surrounding the buffet, where I’m chewing on a moist sticky sweet macaroon are hundreds of players symbolically throwing money at numbers in electronic machines — numbers painted on felt tabletops — numbers inscribed on wheels.

Gaming they call it, not gambling. Gaming is sport — gambling is a vice.

It’s wonderful to have visions and dreams, but thoroughly evil and destructive when we seek to have government accomplish them on our behalf. The means, not the dream, is the problem. It ends up taking away liberty and creating unanticipated forms of destruction. This is the great lesson that economics has to teach us, but it is evident that the message has not stuck.

COVER STORY By Emily Thornton Roads To Riches Why investors are clamoring to take over America’s highways, bridges, and airports—and why the public should be nervous

And only $10.

Steven Pearlstein’s “From Old World to Real World“ is a remarkable piece on the economics of international trade and protection.

It might be May Day in Cuba--the day on which Castro gives his traditional 4–5 hour speech, or so says NPR with exuberant expectation—but at the Mises Institute, it is Benjamin Anderson day. He was born on May 1, 1886. He was an outstanding economist who first drew Hazlitt’s attention to the Austrian School with his book The Value of Money.

Bill Steigerwald, associate editor, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, puts the horrible Virginia Tech shooting in its almost-forgotten historical context.

As noted in my previous post, the case KSR International v. Teleflex was an important patent case pending before the Supreme Court. The question involved whether it should be more difficult to obtain a patent for a claimed invention in a patent application. I was hopeful the Court would decide to narrow or drop the TSM (teaching, suggestion, or motivation) test, wich makes it harder to overturn patents that were too obvious to have been granted.