Category: Economics
Choice: No Fruits, No Shirts, No Service
I’ve been slowly working my way through Choice: The Best of Reason, edited by Nick Gillespie, Reason’s Editor-in-Chief. I subscribe to Reason, and I normally read through each issue over a period of a couple of hours. Then I have to wait a month to do it all over again. Choice, however, is a collection… Read more
Deposit and Return
In the hope of encouraging more recycling, Illinois Lt. Governor Pat Quinn is pushing a 5-cent deposit for beverage containers. Unclaimed deposits would be used for environmental programs. I think this is a terrific idea. It will save me a lot of work because I can now just toss this stuff out the car window… Read more
The Wealth Un-Race
Over on Left2Right, Don Herzog is talking about equal opportunity, using a race as an analogy. Not that I object to his conclusion, but I’ve never liked the race analogy because it can be misleading. Wealth is not a race, or at least not a normal one. A race is about more than just a… Read more
Of Books and Oranges
Over on Marginal Revolution, Steve Landsburg is wondering if there are too many books and says something a little strange: Writing a book is not like growing an orange. If you grow the best orange in the world, the second best orange still gets eaten. But if you write the best book in the world,… Read more
Theory of Escalation or Escalation of Theory.
Economist Steven E. Landsburg wonders in Slate why people walk up stairs but don’t walk up escalators. It’s a clever example of how economists think about problems and the kinds of mistakes they make. Some of his Slate readers don’t get it: You fool economists have way too much time on your hands. You ignore… Read more