“We are able to lead fuller and richer lives thanks to the global division of labor, and the “basic” life skills about which so many people fret are, it turns out, not so basic after all.” ~ Art Carden
Colleges and universities (and, increasingly, high schools) are prescribing exactly the wrong kind of treatment for students confronted with ideas they don’t like.
The transition back to normal life involves the coordination of the disparate and often-incompatible plans of billions of minds–and if we wish for that coordination to make the best use of knowledge in society, we are making a mistake if we are looking for a plan.
I was pleasantly surprised that curbside recycling has been suspended–for explicitly environmental and epidemiological reasons. Maybe curbside recycling is gone for good, which would free up resources that would then be available to expand the kinds of operations that actually help the environment.
A lot of people stop listening to economists when struggle to precisely articulate and explain the “solution” in minute detail. Yet it is precisely because we cannot specify in advance precisely how ‘the market’ will address the problem that makes markets indispensable.
Governments have been providing fire protection, police services, roads, and other public services for pretty much our entire lives. Private, volunteer companies were getting the job done — until political entrepreneurs noticed a way to obtain power and resources for themselves by taking over previously-private volunteer fire departments to create patronage jobs for political allies.
The entire dismal science rests on this very, very simple insight: specialization makes our labor more productive. We could complicate this in all sorts of different ways, and that’s exactly what we do when we move from specialization to supply and demand.
During a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, certain things suddenly come into sharp focus. In this case, we are overwhelmed with examples of how regulatory barriers, restrictions, and blockages have […]
We muddy the message when we don’t let prices change, and we tear the ties that bind us together when we create a snitching society.