Viewing profile — Rumford

Sounds like a really interesting book! I read the synopsis and the mainstream is sorely in need of a approach that acknowledges the extreme complexity and heterogeneity of an econo…

Your instincts are not wrong, believe it or not. Unfortunately most economists fall short of the current state of their science. The first thing one needs to understand about econo…

This is supposedly irresistible "psychological warfare" and yet not one of these shady games companies has gotten a penny from me. At the end of the day the only one who decides to…

The truth will out, complicated character-assassination plots notwithstanding.

Imagine what would happen if the Pentagon were held to Sarbanes-Oxley the way private businesses are.

The existence of central planning anywhere in Western financial systems is even more insulting. After watching the examples of our good neighbors to the East you'd think we would h…

The latter half of the 19th century up to WW1 was the USA's longest sustained period of high growth and high economic mobility. No central bank. Moderate deflation was the norm. Ac…

Well, one satirical short story and actual historical socialism's mountains of corpses.

Like maybe don't put a Soviet-style central committee in charge of the money supply? It's depressing to me that modern economies like the US and Europe can be so shot through with …

Ever read Harrison Bergeron? Making everyone equally happy is impossible, so the regime ultimately resorts to making everyone equally miserable.

Past experience makes me pretty confident of what I'll find this time.

Point taken, and I'm glad you see the merit in the discussion about what things the state has any right to do. After all, sometimes trespassing is the right thing to do. I certainl…

What if they already are? I can think of a handful of newsletters that command a three-figure annual subscription price. The people who buy them must regard them as useful and of s…

> "Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up" I'm a big believer in Chesterton's Fence too, but what do you do about fences put up by someone who had…

The simplest thing I could suggest is to repeal all government-enforced occupational licensing. For heaven's sake you need a state license just to give manicures. In America. This …

Okay, so the 50 million number emerges gradually. What do you suppose the first million are doing while the other 49 gradually emerge? Unless they're complete derelicts, they're go…

You're probably right. For example: Even though you can buy a Thinkpad directly from Lenovo, Best Buy still exists.

There are some interesting comments in here about how tough the struggle is for car dealerships, but I don't think that necessarily justifies their existence or mitigates the point…

Oh not this again. First of all, Friedman advocated a negative income tax as a replacement to the ad-hoc mess of redistributive taxes, grants and welfare programs that exist now. A…

Please elaborate. Is that a reason to dismiss the argument? Is it not obvious that tax payers are naturally at odds with tax eaters?

Is it not an option to just stop visiting these sites?

I suppose they should be commended for the effort, but the other issue is that the experimental group is unlikely to represent what things would be like under a truly universal bas…

The Friedman negative income tax would surely be better than the complicated patchwork of taxes and welfare programs modern countries have today, if only for its simplicity. I woul…

Economic experiments can never really have a control group, so what the Dutch government learns from this will depend greatly on the theory they already have when interpreting the …

At least they have avoided giving it an Orwellian name including the phrase "free trade". Free trade can be described in a few sentences. These voluminous inter-governmental manage…