Two weeks ago tonight I gave a talk on GMU’s Fairfax campus that was co-sponsored (and video-taped) by my friends at the Future of Freedom Foundation and by the great group of students with the GMU Econ Society.
In this talk, I discuss the important distinction between law and legislation. The latter is emphatically not synonymous with the former.
Last night I opened an e-mail from someone cleverly named Al Gore who asserted that “markets undervalue existence value.” I – along with Roger Meiners and Todd Zywicki – disagree. (This paper was published in Environmental Law, Vol. 29 [1999].)
Here’s a letter to the New York Times:
Explaining the political necessity that many Democrats feel to publicly denounce House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – and conceding that these denunciations will cause problems for Democrats in the next Congress – Democratic political strategist Mark Mellman says “But more people are concerned about winning than about whatever post-election problems we might have” (“Pelosi Renounced by Candidates in Her Own Party,” Oct. 16).
I admire Mr. Mellman’s honesty. Public-choice scholars, such as my (now-retired) George Mason University colleagues James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, have long argued that politicians’ vision never extends beyond the next election. The consequence of this political myopia is that, contrary to popular myth, government is not uniquely concerned with the future; instead, politicians too frequently sacrifice the public’s long-run welfare in exchange for the cheap and irresponsible thrill of immediate victory at the polls.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Here’s a letter to the New York Times:
Paul Krugman rightly complains about the “robo-signers” of mortgage-foreclosure documents (“The Mortgage Morass,” Oct. 15). If robo-signing really occurred, it is inexcusable. People should not have their lives affected by posers who sign and give life to legal documents without even reading the contents of these documents.
The same complaint, however, ought to be leveled against what we might call “robo-voters” – legislators who vote to give life to legislation without even reading the contents of the legislation. If the robo-signing of mortgage-foreclosure documents justifies a moratorium on foreclosures, surely the robo-voting for, say, Obamacare justifies a moratorium on the implementation of that legislation – a massive legal document that was approved with the votes of many legislators who cannot possibly have read the entire bill before voting for its enactment.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Here’s a letter to the Boston Globe, in response to a letter-to-the-editor written by someone who really must read Russ’s book The Choice:
Rejecting Jeff Jacoby’s argument for free trade, John Schreiber writes “Does he [Jacoby] want his kids to be greeters at Wal-Mart selling cheap Chinese goods or to be engineers or scientists designing a new product? That choice is easy for me” (Letters, Oct. 12).
Mr. Schreiber has matters backwards. By buying products such as textiles, footwear, and luggage from China and other foreign countries, workers and resources in America are freed to work in fields such as bioengineering and artificial intelligence.
If we prevent the importation of “cheap Chinese goods,” we’d thereby promote in America industries that produce – what? – cheap American goods. How bleak. We Americans would pay higher prices for cheap goods and, more importantly, be denied many of the cutting-edge and challenging career opportunities that Mr. Schreiber and I (and, I’m sure, Mr. Jacoby) want for our children.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
I have more than a few thoughts but I’ll try to control myself.
(In my previous post mentioning that I now have an iPad, a number of commenters mentioned their dislike for Apple’s approach to software development. I want to come back to that for another post, so please wait to comment on that issue. This post is about the product, not the ideology.)
When the iPad was first announced it was mocked by many for its seeming lack of niche. It’s just a giant iPhone without the phone. Who will want it? Just the Mac fan boys and geeky lovers of anything new. That prediction was wildly off the mark. Having sold 3.5 million units in the first 80 days or so, it is the fastest selling electronic device ever.
I wasn’t going to get one–I have a Kindle for reading which I like a lot and my laptop goes everywhere with me–so I have all my photos (about 3000) and all my music (about 3000 songs). What use would I have for a device that weighed more than the Kindle, promised to distract me from reading with browsing and email, and added little functionality beyond my laptop?
Then I met someone who treated it like a serious business tool.
Then I had an idea for a serious economics education app for the device.
Then someone gave me one.
I’ve had it for four days so here are some impressions.
It’s gloriously beautiful. I’ve added apps and bought some I don’t expect to use much just because I want to admire they way they look on the screen. Examples are Star Walk, Solar Walk and the Louvre app.
I have the entire Talmud (or close to it–they’re still creating the parts of it for the app). I had the entire Talmud in English on my Kindle. I think it was $1. It was just for the fun of it. It wasn’t very usable. iTalmud for the iPad is $30. It’s Hebrew or English. It comes with an audio file explaining the page you’re viewing. It tells you where there are daily Talmud classes in your area. It comes with 6 commentaries and when one of those commentaries have something to say about a phrase in the text, the text is highlighted. You touch it and the commentary appears in a box. So instead of buying maybe 50 or so volumes that take up 20 or 30 feet of shelf space and would cost thousands of dollars, I have the Talmud in my hand. It blows me away.
I can read my Kindle books on my iPad. I like the Kindle screen better (though it isn’t self-lit like the iPad.) But when it comes to eye strain the Kindle’s more like reading a book. The iPad is more like reading a computer screen. But the book looks better, generally on the iPad. The charts are crisp–on the Kindle you can’t always read them and photos are the same. On the regular-sized Kindle they’re a joke. On the iPad they’re glorious.
Email on the iPad is fantastic. The on-screen keyboard is pretty good. Not great for long (more than a paragraph or s0) writing but fine for short emails.
The pdf reader I’m using (GoodReader) is spectacular. It is unbelievably easy to create a pdf out of a web page and store it for later reading. It’s incredibly easy to annotate the pdf. I had to go downtown today. Instead of taking my Kindle on the Metro, I took the iPad and read a superb analysis of the securitization market by Josh Rosner. (More on that another time). But while I’ve read pdfs on the regular-size Kindle it’s pretty horrible. The iPad makes me want to read them.
Reading blogs on the iPad is better than on the web. I’m using Pulse as a blog reader. The posts are cleaner and crisper with less distractions.
All of the integrated tasks are really superb–emailing a pdf, a photo, selected text–it’s all really intuitive and a breeze.
In short, the iPad is a pretty good substitute for my laptop. I hate lugging my 6 pound laptop through airports on my shoulder. But it’s not just that the iPad is lighter. There’s something more intimate about the tactile experience of the iPad. Touching the screen seems natural. The only thing I struggle with is selecting text. It’s pretty good but not great. Maybe I’ll get better at it. Maybe there’s something that will make it better.
What are the drawbacks? I wonder about eye strain. Blogging with it is horrible. WordPress has an app but it’s pitiful. I assume it will get better. But typing long docs on a virtual keyboard would be very frustrating. There’s an amazing free Dragon Dictation app that allows you to dictate. I’m also going to try a wireless keyboard.
So based on four days, it’s clear to me that this isn’t just a giant iTouch or an iPhone without the phone. It’s a different tactile, intimate way to interact with your data and photos and hobbies and some of your work life. (And check out the Korg iElectribe. $20 and I’m tempted to buy it just to admire it.)
I don’t want to overdo it. It’s four days. Maybe I’ll get tired of it or frustrated by the drawbacks. But I do think it’s a spectaculart way to carry a bunch of intellectual stimulation and aesthetic diversion when I travel. I’m planning on leaving my laptop at home on my next short trip. (And LogMeIn Ignition seems to be able to get at your laptop’s files from your iPad. Amazing) I’d like it to replace my laptop. It can’t yet. But the fact that I want it to, tells me something.
In response to this report at Reuters on the looming trade war between Uncle Sam and Beijing, [HT Andy Roth] I sent in this comment (which, as of 1:03pm EDT today, has yet to appear on the Reuters’ site):
If governments fought real wars like they fight trade wars, here’s how the transcript of the communiqués between the leaders of two warring nations would read:
Leader of Absurditopia (A): I say, leader of Stupidia – we demand that you stop occupying that contested strip of land. If you refuse, we’ll have no choice but to shoot our own citizens.
Leader of Stupidia (S): You don’t scare us! That land is ours. And if you do kill some of your own people, make no mistake that we will immediately – and just as cruelly – commence to killing our own people. Courage is our national motto!
(A): Ha! You’re bluffing. But I’m not. I’ve just courageously ordered my troops to mow down in cold blood ten percent of my fellow countrymen. Take that!
(S): How dare you attack you like that! You leave us no choice but to attack us. I am ordering the Stupidian army to slaughter 15 percent of innocent Stupidians here in Stupidia. How do you like them apples?!
(A): You are cruel and inhuman to damage us by killing your people. I hereby instruct all of my fellow Absurditopians to commit suicide! Only then will you nasty Stupidians get your proper comeuppance and we Absurditopians the justice that we are due!
(S): You can’t beat us, you Absurditopian you! Listen up. I’m ordering all of my fellow citizens – Stupidians all! – to commit suicide. We’ll see who emerges victorious!
….
Then a long, long silence.
This gorgeous graphic (HT: Tyler at MR) shows how big Africa is without the distortions of the Mercator projection. It is a beautiful example of how to display information. (Assuming it’s accurate…)
In my latest column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I support fair trade. Here are my concluding paragraphs:
Yet even for those rare jobs that have no direct connection with trade, the wages earned by their workers are higher because of trade. By keeping prices down, and outputs and product varieties up, trade makes every dollar earned go further. This fact means that the attractiveness of any particular job — even one that does not depend upon sales to foreigners or on inputs or investments supplied by foreigners — is raised by trade.
Put differently, among the very reasons that losing a particular job to trade is so traumatic is that that job is made so attractive by trade.
Of course, each of us would love to have our own job guaranteed while we simultaneously exercise the consumer sovereignty that enables us to enjoy a high standard of living. But to guarantee your job requires a sacrifice of some of your neighbor’s consumer sovereignty — just as a policy that guarantees your neighbor his job requires a sacrifice of some of your consumer sovereignty.
The only fair policy — and the only one that ensures long-run prosperity for all — is a policy in which no one’s consumer sovereignty is ever sacrificed.
Keynesians are fond of claiming that advocates of unconditional savings commit the fallacy of composition. I’m pretty sure that this Keynesian claim is mistaken. But here’s a real instance of the commission of the fallacy of composition: “Monopoly power increases the wealth of producers in industry X; therefore, if every industry is monopolized, we’ll all be wealthier.”
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