From Dec 2010, here’s the post “Wikileaks is good for you.” Go take a look. If Trump has any sense, he would pardon Assange, Snowden, and Manning while he has the authority and redeem himself a tiny bit. But I… Read More ›
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The Bases for a Free Society
“Precepts for living together are not going to be handed down from on high. Men must use their own intelligence in imposing order on chaos, intelligence not in scientific problem-solving but in the more difficult sense of finding and maintaining… Read More ›
This Policy, Alone – Part 8
NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING economist Douglass North observed that “economic history is overwhelmingly a story of economies that failed to produce a set of economic rules of the game (with enforcement) that induce sustained economic growth.” A sound education system is the… Read More ›
Amazon is Amazing
Nothing warms the cockles of this economist’s heart like seeing a market do its bit beautifully. As we say in the trade (pun intended), markets work and incentives matter. That sums up very neatly two of the fundamental insights of… Read More ›
Walter E Williams, RIP.
Walter E. Williams insisted that the E in his name stood for excellent. He was excellent. He suffered no fools. He passed away today. About him, the wiki says: Walter Edward Williams (March 31, 1936 – December 2, 2020) was… Read More ›
Thanksgiving
Of all the American holidays I like Thanksgiving the best. For starters, it’s a secular holiday. Secular in the true sense of the term — not religious — and not in the way that secular is understood in India where… Read More ›
Wisdom, Genius, Knowledge and Intelligence
I am always struck by the variations in human capacities. We humans are strikingly unequally endowed in physical and mental capabilities. Non-human animals of a particular species are generally very similar. For instance, individual members of the species common pigeon … Read More ›
Finite System, Infinite Cycles
In a recent email exchange, my correspondent wrote, “they say if everyone consumed like the US, we would need 2.5 earths.” That sort of claim is commonly made and readily accepted as true. A June 2015 BBC magazine article titled… Read More ›
An Auction of Stolen Goods
In an essay titled “Sham Battle” published in October 1936 in the Baltimore Evening Sun, H. L. Mencken enunciated a truth that is one of the core axioms of public choice theory. That axiom is the homely truth that politicians… Read More ›
US Presidential Elections
Even though it is just a couple of days to the US elections, it is still uncertain whether Trump will keep his job come January 2021. The opinion polls favor Biden but they can be wrong, since it is a… Read More ›