Art Carden
Economics in Three I’s: Incentives, Institutions, and Intentions
“Economics is the study of human action and its unintended consequences, and if you take away three Is–Incentives Matter, Institutions Matter, Intentions Don’t Matter (as much as you think)–then you are on the road to wisdom.” ~ Art Carden
I, Meal: The Symphonies of Cooperation on Made in a Day
“Airplane meals, tractors, guitars, and whiskey are the products of human design, but they are the products of human design that are parts of a broader symphony of order and cooperation no one mind is composing.” ~ Art Carden
Want to Prepare for the Next Pandemic? Read These Five Books on Expertise
“When we turn experts into masters rather than advisers, we throw away a lot of important knowledge. Experts definitely have their place, but we have to remember that they respond to incentives and have their own epistemic limitations.” ~ Art Carden
What’s in a Name? Quite a Lot, Actually
“After studying economics, I started to understand what brand names do. Social phenomena persist because they solve problems, and brand names solve significant information problems. I think critics of brand names and marketing would do well to give consumers the benefit of the doubt.” ~ Art Carden
Prices Have Work To Do, Even in Pandemics
“It has been the government’s failure to not let market prices work at all and instead address the pandemic with command-and-control policies that have created shortages, thwarted innovation, and distributed vaccines based not on what will most internalize the spillover benefits of vaccination but based on political considerations about who should enjoy the private benefits…
Sanctions Against South Africa and the Cuban Embargo
“The sanctions undoubtedly had psychological and moral effects, just like the US embargo on Cuba. Neither Levy nor Lowenberg and Kaempfer–or any followup literature I’ve been able to find–thinks these effects have as much explanatory power as apartheid’s inefficiency, growing internal political opposition, and the fall of the Soviet Union.” ~ Art Carden
Cuba Demoted to “Not Real Socialism”
“We can look at socialism’s miserable track record and try to learn from what people actually do and actually want. Retroactively saying ‘Actually, that isn’t real socialism’ about the Cuban revolution won’t change the fact that people vote for freedom and against socialism in overwhelming numbers.” ~ Art Carden
The Devil Is in the Details and the Definitions: Education Defined in the Process of Its Emergence
“The place of CRT in the curriculum is better settled by the peaceful conversations that happen in markets rather than in rowdy public meetings. Instead of trying to plan what people should know from the top-down, it would be far better to loosen their bonds and see what emerges from the bottom up.” ~ Art…
July 2, 1962: The Day Retail Changed Forever
“Nothing is stopping commentators or humanitarians from starting a competing enterprise–call it HeartMart–run by a team of executives who are just as able as the people running Walmart but who are less greedy and, therefore, positioned to create better jobs for the people Walmart is so ruthlessly exploiting without compromising shareholder returns, prices, or selection.”…
On Frank Knight, Intelligence and Democratic Action
“Intelligence and Democratic Action is the work of a distinguished and influential scholar who spent a lifetime wrestling with the tensions between the real and the ideal, the actual and the imagined. It is a brief but deep exploration of the contours of the social sciences, and it is worth serious consideration by anyone concerned…
