Progressive thinking
No more countries; just websites. (Thanks Gary North)
Idealism and Optimism as a Market Force
There are those who argue that everything should be for-profit, observes Karen De Coster, that the IRS created nonprofits. The nonprofit form of enterprise is indispensable to both recipient individuals and the benefactors who fund them.
Bastiat on Government
The roots of America’s governance problems are continually discussed, particularly on July 4. But they are far from new, because they trace back to a mistaken approach to government. Fortunately, this problem was dissected long ago by Frederic Bastiat, among history’s most ardent and eloquent defenders of liberty, whose June 30 birthday we mark on Saturday. In his 1848 essay, Government, he gave what may still be the most insightful critique of our current problems arising from government.
Kirzner on Knowledge vs. Information
In this short article, Israel Kirzner makes a distinction between information and knowledge, or between “information-knowledge” and “action-knowledge,” or between pure data of which no practical use is made and entrepreneurship.
Hayekian “Free Banker” Appointed to Fed
Over at the Financial Markets Center, they’re none too happy about the appointment of Randall Kroszner to the Fed:
Who’s Afraid of the CPI!
Everybody worries about inflation these days. It’s chic. It’s trendy. And it gives me a great comeback to the boss at raise time. “Congrats, Roberts, you’re getting a 3% increase.”
“Yeah, I just about keep up with inflation,” I reply with that snippy look that bosses hate. A smart alecky answer, I know. Because I’m not gonna buy a new house or send a kid to college — two big CPI boosters.
Look! Up in the Sky! It’s An Inflation-Fighting Fed!
How can we “fight” inflation, asks Cyd Malone, if we pretend not to have even a clear idea of its cause? For example: Bernanke blames oil for inflation in direct contradiction to his own words.
The Government’s Highway System
In a recent article I argued that the federal government’s involvement with the nascent internet caused some serious problems down the road. Not everyone was convinced, though I personally thought the article, and my follow-up comments, were absolutely brilliant.
Econometrics and knowledge
The National Bureau of Economic Research has just published a study that purports to answers one of the questions that has stumped men for ages, “Why do high earners work long hours?” Will the next study answer another unsolved mystery, “Why do those who work long hours tend to be high earners?” There are a number of ways used by men in attempt to discover truth, one way is to employ empirical methods and gather data and generate correlation statistics, while another way is to utilize a priori logic and
CO2 Science’s Finding on Global Warming: A Marxist-Type Response
One of the very first replies to my posting of CO2 Science’s journal review “A 221-Year Temperature History of the Southwest Coast of Greenland” was this: “’CO2 Science’ is funded by Exxon. Come on, you guys are usually such independent thinkers—you can do better than rehash this stuff.”
