--Art Carden

R2-D2 and Chewbacca: long-term Rebel agents (HT: Mike Ray). I've wondered about what I see as a hole in the plot at the end of ROTS: first, since it's clear that Palpatine is very, very strong--too strong for Obi-Wan alone--and that Anakin is strong and getting stronger, why didn't Obi-Wan and Yoda team up to take out Palpatine and then hunt down Anakin? Given Obi-Wan's experiences fighting Count Dooku and the fact that Palpatine very quickly dispatched the Jedi who had accompanied Mace Windu to arrest him, this looks like a pretty serious tactical blunder. Comments are open.

--E. Frank Stephenson

Geithner Says U.S. Will ‘Never’ Lose Aaa Debt Rating

Hope you're as reassured as I am.

--Tim Shaughnessy

A Jan 26-27 Gallup poll asked people about economic concepts, including how much we all like socialism:

More than one-third of Americans (36%) have a positive image of "socialism," while 58% have a negative image. Views differ by party and ideology, with a majority of Democrats and liberals saying they have a positive view of socialism, compared to a minority of Republicans and conservatives.

and yet

Americans are almost uniformly positive in their reactions to three terms: small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs.

A third of us have a positive view of the philosophy that spawned the bloodbath that was the 20th century's flirtation with socialism?

--Art Carden

Via XKCD.

--Art Carden

Via XKCD.

--Edward J. Lopez

Was the current recession over as of July-August-September of 2009? Will it be a caterpillar recovery? What in the recovery is real, and what is stimulus? How do states measure on economic freedom and knowledge-intensity?

Learn more and bask in the reassuring cadence of Bruce Yandle speaking in his new podcast from Inside State and Local Policy. About 20 minutes.

--Art Carden

Mike Munger ladles mockery upon Ezra Klein for his shock and dismay about politicians acting like politicians. This always brings me back to one of my favorite quotes, from Murray Rothbard:

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

I spend time in econ 101 talking about how understanding and applying the economic way of thinking is an important part of developing a good ethos. It raises a question about intellectual responsibility: if you're going to pontificate, what do you have a duty to know? Comments are open.

--E. Frank Stephenson

Those are the only words appropriate for describing today's cartoon by the AJC's Mike Luckovich. I don't know what promted the GA Senate to pass a bill opposing the forced implantation of microchips nor do I know why anyone would even want to force people to have microchips implanted. But somehow finding a bill opposing forced implantation objectionable means Luckovich has about as illiberal attitude as one could possibly have. (I bet he also considers himself, without recognizing the irony, to be "pro-choice.")

UPDATE: This article explains that the Senate passed the bill 47-2 and that if the bill becomes a law GA would join states including CA and WI in having such a law. It's hard to fathom why Luckovich could consider such a bill to be harmful.

UPDATE2: Maybe there's a good reason to fear forced implants. After all: The government has your baby's DNA.

--Art Carden

In honor of Super Bowl Sunday and the Simpsons Coke commercial earlier, I offer the words of C. Montgomery Burns on "the American Dream: a billionaire using public funds to build a construct a private playground for the rich and powerful." From the archives, here are a few links on The House that Jerry Jones Built With Money He Took From Other People. Here's Evan Weiner on The Subsidized Bowl: both participating teams have gotten loads of money from various governments.

--Art Carden

Friedman makes a couple of important points: a special interest is a special interest, whether it's a business or not, and just because a police is good for--i.e., creates rents for--a specific industry or a specific business doesn't mean it's consistent with free enterprise. Also, it's easy to see the trouble and suffering of the steel worker who loses his or her job. It's much more difficult to consider the innovations and increases in standards of living we sacrifice in order to protect jobs in specific industries.

HT: Don Boudreaux.

--Art Carden

Robert Wright thinks so (here's Derek Thompson). I've been wondering more and more what the reference point is for those who lament the alleged moral bankruptcy or cultural famines of modernity because it seems like Wright's "original idea of America" is, at best, a pleasant fiction. Yes, it is true that perhaps today's world of pick-and-choose media allows people to insulate themselves from reality, but that was also true 150 years ago. In Memphis, for example, there were (I think) seven different newspapers that allowed readers to wallow in confirmation bias to their hearts' content. Indeed, during the Memphis riot of early May, 1866, members of the mob hoisted the editor of the Avalanche on their shoulders and threatened to burn the offices of the Post, which was a pro-union newspaper in town (to his credit, the editor of the Avalanche discouraged them).

Perhaps, though, people yearn for the days when our national news options were more or less limited to Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Peter Jennings. This concerns me because it translates to a yearning for the days when We (whoever "we" are) controlled the conversation and didn't have to worry about competition from dissenters like Fox News. On Fox News, here are David Henderson and James Otteson.

Finally, Nick Gillespie makes an important point on how left-wing condescension short-circuits meaningful discussion (HT: Steve Horwitz). It reinforces my belief that American conservatives and liberals are like Coke and Pepsi: they taste different, but at the end of the day, they're basically the same thing. Conservatives believe we can turn our guns outward and plan the lives of foreigners; liberals believe we can turn our guns inward and plan the lives of Americans. To borrow from Bryan Caplan, this is to-may-to, to-mah-to for libertarians whose relevant political spectrum extends from the totalitarian Joseph Stalin to the anarchist Murray Rothbard. Along these lines, here's F.A. Hayek explaining why he is not a conservative. And here's George Orwell's classic essay "Politics and the English Language."

--Art Carden

I gave a couple of talks on Walmart at Buena Vista University yesterday and promised to post some links relevant to some of the questions people asked. On the importance of private property rights, play the bunny game from the IHS. Here's my Mises Media Archive, with audio of my "Environmental and Resource Economics" lecture. Here's my list of links from a panel at Rhodes; it includes links to Lant Pritchett's excellent book Let Their People Come. I also recommend William Easterly's wonderful The White Man's Burden and C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Addendum: Here's my paper with Charles Courtemanche and Jeremy Meiners on Walmart and values, available for ungated download from BEPress.

--E. Frank Stephenson

From today's WSJ:

Want to ensure a bigger draw for your lackluster candidate? In Ukraine, just contact Vladimir Boyko and he'll rent you a crowd.

Mr. Boyko says his company, Easy Work, has assembled a database of several thousand students and can mobilize them on a day's notice to turn up at demonstrations anywhere in Kiev, stand for hours at a time, and cheer or jeer on cue.

--Craig Depken

I have been having a good time in Hong Kong - hence no activity from me lately.

I did have this come across my email box and figured to share with the others.

Open voting for the three economists who most contributed to the financial meltdown is the topic for this year's IgNobel prize in economics.

Vote early and vote often

--E. Frank Stephenson

Co-blogger Art's comparison of Obama and Steve Jobs speeches given on January 27.

Steve Horwitz on the federal government, a GM owner, having a conflict of interest in the Toyota gas pedal mess.

Thomas Hazlett on Google.

Jay Schalin on the debate over the causes of low college graduation rates: Are low completion rates caused by poorly prepared students or by inadequate resources?

A USA Today piece on the backlash against revenue redlight cameras.

And from the shameless self-promotion department--yours truly on Georgia's budget issues.

--E. Frank Stephenson

Nice vid from a GMU undergrad.

--Brad Smith

The President is promoting a special, bipartisan commission to deal with deficit reduction. It is supposed to produce proposed tax hikes and spending cuts to bring the deficit down. I thought we already had such a commission: it's called Congress.

--E. Frank Stephenson

Tiger Woods Mistress Golf Ball Set

--Art Carden

So you're a graduate student and you're wondering "what should I do this summer?" I would encourage you to apply for a Rowley Summer Fellowship from the Mises Institute. I spent a few weeks there in the summer of 2003, attended the Rothbard Graduate Seminar on Man, Economy, and State, and generally enjoyed the outstanding intellectual environment (the change of scenery was nice, too). HT: Tom Woods.

Speaking of nice scenery and outstanding intellectual environments, the American Institute for Economic Research also has a student summer fellowship program. I've been to AIER as a Visiting Research Fellow twice, and I've loved it both times. Suffice it to say that the summer climate in the Berkshires is much, much more pleasant than the summer climate in Memphis.

Here's my "Opportunities for Students" page, which I expect to update periodically. It has links to a handful of other resources.

--Edward J. Lopez

Yesterday I blogged about I, Pencil. Today as I begin class I will have the following on the projector.

I, Beer

In tribute to Leonard E.Reed

I, beer, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe. Millions take me for granted, yet not a single person on the face of the earth knows every process required to make me. Think of the complex web of people and the numberless skills that went into my creation. I, beer, am a complex collection of miracles: hops, barley, yeast, water, glass bottles, metal caps, printed labels, and so on. Contemplate all the tractors and sprinklers and fertilizers and other implements used in growing and harvesting the hops and barley. Think of all the persons and the countless skills that went into their production: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into blades and machine parts, the many miles of irrigation pipes and canals that bring water to the fields, and so on. But to these miracles an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies -- milions of know-hows spontaneously responding to human necessity and desire in the absence of any governmental or any other coercive masterminding. Indeed, the seemingly simple task of producing one beer such as I is so vastly complex that no one could plan it. If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom humanity is so unhappily losing.

As far as I know, this was written by a group of Koch Summer Fellows in the summer 2001, when I was visiting at GMU. They made t-shirts, which were quite cool. I got the text from Rob Frommer.

--Art Carden

I found this interesting (HT: Doctor J) because it illustrates the myopia of politics. This played right into what I' thinking about this morning as I prep for a couple of trips this month and as I think about how the history of twentieth-century economic thought will be written. My question, in response:

"Hey you. You there in the 'Hope and Change' t-shirt (or with the "W-The President" sticker on your car--it doesn't really matter). If I pawn my car title, am I richer because I have more cash in my wallet?"

In reviewing a handful of books on Walmart by self-styled progressives and in prepping for taking a revised Walmart lecture on tour, I'm struck by the implicit view that the Big Business/Big Government/Big Labor iron triangle represented by the new industrial state of the 1950s and 1960s was a stable, long-run equilibrium. As we've learned in recent years, you can only consume so much capital before you run out. Here's Bryan Caplan quoting Amar Bhide on big corporations losing money. Here's George Reisman on where GM might be without the UAW. My prediction: if retail is unionized and all else remains equal, the government will someday end up taking over or bailing out Walmart, Costco, and Target the same way they did with the car companies.

--E. Frank Stephenson

Today's offering from the Rome News-Tribune's Mike Lester:

--Edward J. Lopez

It's that time of the semester. This week I am teaching from "I, Pencil" about incentives and institutions, with the punch line going something like this:

What is the market? Consider the statements of three famous economists from the previous three centuries…

Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By…directing that [labour] in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Adam Smith (1723-1790) An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybody’s actions aim at the satisfaction of other people’s needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens. Everybody, on the other hand, is served by his fellow citizens. Everybody is both a means and an end in himself, an ultimate end for himself and a means to other people in their endeavors to attain their own ends.
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949)

When goods are produced and exchanged in competitive free markets in which people trade at market prices, economic activity leads to efficient outcomes… [That is], individual rationality, coupled with competition and prices, leads to efficient outcomes…in which there remain no unexploited opportunities to improve everybody’s welfare. This is so even though individual rationality and competition without prices rarely leads to such desirable outcomes.
Steven Landsburg (1952- )
The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life (1993)

I think these passages complement each other nicely and give students a couple of different entry points for seeing the ideas and their constancey. Now onto Chapter 1 of the textbook.