A Government Flood
The government created the flood—written in 1999 about a different (but similar) flood.
The State and the Flood
What we are seeing in New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast region, writes Lew Rockwell, is the most egregious example of government failure in the United States since September 11, 2001.
Supply, Demand, and the Price of Laptop Computers
The poor Associated Press. It attributes the fall in prices to an increase in demand on the part of college students, but that would raise prices (assuming supply relatively constant). It is competition and increasing efficiency on the supply side that have reduced the price of laptops (VCRs, DVD players, and so on) and thus made laptop purchases attractive to more and more students, not the reverse. This is the market at work to make yesterday’s luxuries available to the masses.
New Orleans, State-Planning, and the Free Market
Michael Barnett, son of William Barnett II, is sticking it out in New Orleans. He’s keeping a livejournal blog about what’s going on, and Mises.org is running a live feed of his webcam.
Oil: Sheer Bubble Speculation?
At a business conference in Sydney, Australia, Steve Forbes suggested that President Bush sell the US oil reserves and warned that the price of oil represents a speculative bubble. According to Radio Australia:
Stop quoting Bastiat!
In the wake of the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina there have been a lot of people who has tried to deny the beneficial effects of this by quoting the classic essay “What is seen and what is not seen”. But that’s wrong, we shouldn’t listen to Bastiat,after all he’s French (FRENCH!!!!). And had Americans listened to the French then the U.S. Government wouldn’t have started the Iraq war.
A Price Gouging Reader
- Price Gouging Saves Lives by David Brown.
- In a Crisis, Markets More than Ever, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
- Oil Prices Again, by Murray Rothbard
- Creating Economic Crimes, by William Anderson
Is this is the first spotting of the “broken window” fallacy?
Spotted just now: what might be the first story claiming that the hurricane (actually the flooding caused by bad public infrastructure) will be good for the economy. It is from the New York Times/International Herald Tribuine (dated Sept 1):
Why Home Study?
Robert Murphy discusses his new home study course designed for the Mises Institute: “If you can’t attend the Mises University, where can you go to study the subject systematically? Over the summer, I worked with the staff at the Mises Institute to find an answer to this problem.”
The Handicapped against Handicapped Parking
Not all handicapped people are in favor of handicapped parking. In response to my recent article, “The State Conquers the Parking Lot,” a handicapped individual writes the following:
