The supposed relationship between James M. Buchanan and the forces of “Massive Resistance” to school desegregation in Virginia is at the center of Nancy MacLean’s story in Democracy in Chains. As Phil has pointed out on his blog and as we discuss in our paper, MacLean attempts to link Buchanan to Massive Resistance via the […]
I’m late to this party: I just recently started watching “House of Cards” on Netflix. As an economist who studies and teaches the economics of political decision making, I find it absolutely captivating. It’s a spectacular example of the public choice tradition, which the Nobel laureate James Buchanan defined as “politics without romance.” After watching […]
Since 2010 I’ve been a contributor to Forbes.com. I agreed a few months ago to publish more, and ideally I’ll be producing 1-2 articles per week (at least). One of my major goals in this will be to summarize and apply research (recent and classic) in articles suitable for classroom use. Here’s what I’ve written […]
Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution. This is a detailed look into the revolutions that rocked Europe at the beginning of the “treason of the clerisy”–Deirdre McCloskey’s term for the intellectuals’ rebellion against European liberalism and embrace of socialism, nationalism, and nationalism. Marcellus Andrews, The Vision of a Real Free Market Society: Re-Imagining American Freedom. […]
Friedrich Hayek put it this way throughout his work: the social problem is not designing institutions in which good people can do the most good. Rather, it is designing them so that bad people can do the least harm. Look around you. You live in a world in which people will voluntarily bear a cost […]
Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. This is nowhere more clearly in evidence than in the AMC hit The Walking Dead. How well will we do after the zombie apocalypse? Not well, I think—we’re a species that burns cars when a football team loses. If anything, watching The Walking Dead has made me wonder how […]
Jeanne Hoffman (Le Chic Geek) has a neat post on her travel habits here. I try and fail to develop routines–at the suggestion of my friend and coach Jason Womack, I used to write where I was and what I was doing on the bathroom mirror with an expo marker every time I stayed in […]
Why not? Because the Zune failed. That the Zune failed in spite of backing by one of the world’s most powerful companies should give us pause when we think about “corporate power.” Products succeed and fail, ultimately, because consumers vote for them or against them with their hard-earned dollars. The Zune is just one of […]
In the video, Emma Maersk is carrying over 10,000 containers of cargo. Could the captain list a complete inventory of what’s on the ship on command? I really doubt it. Most importantly, does he have to know or really care about the people who loaded the containers, the people who made what is in the containers, […]
I just reorganized my travel gear for a trip to Washington DC. Here’s how my backpack is laid out. The large pocket closest to me has three things in it. First, and probably most important, is my MacBook Pro. Second, I have the packet of readings for the summer workshop I’m leading at the American […]
I, Meal: The Symphonies of Cooperation on Made in a Day (AIER.org, August 27, 2021) Want to Prepare for the Next Pandemic? Read These Five Books on Expertise (AIER.org, August 8, 2021) What’s in a Name? Quite a Lot, Actually (AIER.org, July 31, 2021) Prices Have Work To Do, Even in Pandemics (AIER.org, July 26, 2021) […]
I subscribed to Blinkist about a year ago and have learned a ton from their short summaries. Through Monday, you can get half off at the link below and, as an added bonus, contribute a bit via affiliate earnings to my “buy things for my kids and students” fund. Examples include the masks I distributed […]
A few days before the beginning of the Fall semester, Jason Womack posted a prompt on Facebook that popped up just as I was about to close it. He asked, “What five things are you NOT going to do today?” Here were my responses: Respond to that thing that just came across my Facebook feed. Someone […]
A few days before the beginning of the Fall semester, Jason Womack posted a prompt on Facebook that popped up just as I was about to close it. He asked, “What five things are you NOT going to do today?” Here were my responses: Respond to that thing that just came across my Facebook feed. Someone […]
