Thanks to the Rational Review News Digest:
Germans may need licence to watch TV on computers
Computer owners in Germany will need a TV licence in future after German TV and Radio Licensing Authorities proved PCs could be used to watch the telly.
The fee will be collected whether the computer has been equipped to receive radio and television with a “TV card” or not, and will apply to all PCs with an internet connection from January 1, 2007.
Last night coming home from Montgomery, Alabama, I was listening to APR and there was a short report on National Octogenarian Day which listed some of the new words over the last one hundred years. It mentioned that praxeology was coined one hundred years ago! That’s wrong, but it was interesting to hear. For more, see MNR on praxeology.
The IMF is on a roll. After telling us last week that the world’s financial system is in great shape, they have recently reported that “there is no compelling evidence to suggest that the rapid rise in U.S. housing prices in recent years could collapse suddenly”. Now we can all relax.
If a Sun King, or a Robespierre, could bring about no identifiable or lasting increase in the commonwealth of the proud people under their rule, writes Sean Corrigan, what do we really think can be done by the current crop?
In an effort spearheaded by Sen. John McCain--and based on the shakiest of “market failure” grounds--Congress is contemplating spending $1 billion to force users of analog television to switch to digital (according to Wired News). It helps that the government stands to gain up to $70 billion from auctioning portions of the TV spectrum to wireless companies.
Why Do Markets Work So Well? asks Chris Leithner, in an essay comparing the Misesean conception of markets to that of the neoclassical view. Leithner argues that the attempts to model markets mathematically requires a series of assumptions that in the end have removed everything about markets that makes them work in the real world.
James Pinkerton employs the analysis found in Mises’s Bureaucracy to great effect in this good discussion on TechCentral of the beloved Marcia Angell. (By the way, the Mises Institute has to lease these books at a fee; please help.)
Here is a new NBER working paper.
It seems that Teddy Roosevelt’s gunboat diplomacy created some profit opportunities:
“Empire, Public Goods, and the Roosevelt Corollary”
by KRIS JAMES MITCHENER and MARC WEIDENMIER
...writes Joanna Glasner in Wired.
Nonetheless, rather than turn solely to the [9/11] commission’s website to download the [9/11] report, more than 600,000 people have instead paid $10 or so for a printed copy. For the report’s official publisher, W.W. Norton & Co., it’s been an unexpected windfall.
