I rather like this article from The Atlantic, arguing that the typical arguments against chain stores are misplaced. Among other things, it cites a planning consultant who finds that the aesthetes all hate Pottery Barn because it’s a chain and therefore dehumanizing, but that if you show them pictures of a Pottery Barn with a different name on it they all love it.
This piece from Bloomberg, which quotes me from here on the skyscraper as business cycle indicator, was reprinted in many outlets overnight, including the International Herald Tribune.
The most-recent installment of the Washington Post’s “Harvesting Cash” series on the Farm Program appeared on the front page this Sunday, December 10, and it will curdle your milk.
The issue of whether non-scarce things like thoughts or labor are ownable has arisen in recent debates—see, e.g., Thoughts on Intellectual Property, Scarcity, Labor-ownership, Metaphors, and Lockean Homesteading; Intellectual Property and Think Tank Corruption; and New Working Paper: Machan on IP.
In “Dilemmas of an Economic Theorist” (Econometrica, July 2006) Ariel Rubinstein reflects on the meaning, implications, and relevance of formal economic modeling:
by Walter Block and William Barnett II (Loyola University, New Orleans)
As I pointed out in “The Kelo Backlash Begins,” Alabama was the first state to curb eminent domain abuse after the Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo decision. Now we see that in the election last month voters in seven states (FL, GA, MI, NV, NH, ND, SC) approved constitutional amendments prohibiting the use of eminent domain to transfer land to private parties for “economic development.” It would be ideal, of course, to have no eminent domain at all, but the less the better.
“A government strong enough to give you everything is strong enough to take everything.”
This common phrase among libertarians is often applied to redistribution. However, the political environmentalist movement should adhere to these words perhaps closer than anyone.
Private property and markets are accused of being unable to protect the environment. But how does the government role of caretaker work more efficiently?
