16

February 11, 2008

Let’s say you want your computer fixed or your software explained. You can shell out big bucks to the Geek Squad, or you can ask—but you can’t hire—a typical teenager, or even a preteen. Their experience with computers and the online world is vastly superior to that of most people over the age of 30. From the point of view of online technology, it is the young who rule. And yet they are professionally powerless: they are forbidden by law from earning wages from their expertise.

17

September 7, 2009

It’s Labor Day, but there’s nothing to celebrate.

On July 24 this year, the government raised the minimum wage to $7.25, which is another way of saying that unemployment is mandatory for anyone who is otherwise willing to work for less. You have no freedom to negotiate or lower the price for your service. You are either already valuable at this rate or you are out of the game.

18

January 21, 2008

See if you can spot anything wrong with the following claim, a version of which seems to appear in a book, magazine, or newspaper every few weeks for as long as I’ve been reading public commentary on economic matters:

The dominant idea guiding economic policy in the United States and much of the globe has been that the market is unfailingly wise….

19

November 12, 2007

The cashier overlooked the milk in my shopping cart, so there had to be a separate transaction to process it. I paid for it with American Express, and it suddenly occurred to me to apologize.

“I’m so sorry for that. Your fees on that card will probably exceed your profit.”

She looked at me as if I were speaking an unintelligible language.

“My fees?” she asked.

20

May 17, 2002

Pity the businessman who hires someone just out of school! Most graduating seniors have lived a lush life in college, after living a lazy life in high school, and a goof-off life before that.

Graduating seniors know all about credit cards, popular culture, web surfing, internet chat, and PC politics, but next to nothing about what used to be called the work ethic. In short, they are worse than useless to the world of commerce.

21

June 6, 2008

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

— Matthew 13:44

22

January 17, 2007

Not being a television watcher, I was amazed to discover, from watching an hour or two of commercials this weekend, that there is a little pill you can take that will turn your body from portly and weak to thin and strong in a matter of months, if not weeks.

And how much better will be the eventual results if you acquire this thing called The Bean, which looks like a blow-up pool toy but is really the key to flattening your belly and giving you abs of extraordinary beauty?

23

October 24, 2001

Ten years ago, Pope John Paul II released Centesimus Annus, an encyclical, at once subtle and sweeping, that addressed the future of the post-communist countries of Europe and the general subjects of freedom, society, and faith. The document represented the fullest embrace that the Catholic Church has given in the modern period to classical liberal ideas, particularly as they apply in the economic sphere.

24

January 21, 2009

When an author signs a publication contract, insofar as it contains strict and traditional copyright notices, he is pretty much signing his life away. It used to be that the publisher would maintain control only so long as the book is in print. Today, with digital printing, this means forever: your lifetime plus 70 years.

25

November 16, 2009

Some Harvard professors are taking very seriously their “intellectual property rights” and have claimed copyright to the ideas that they spread in their classrooms. What prompted this was a website in which students posted their notes to help other students.