Billions have been spent on public parks in the last couple of decades. Why, then, does it seem that most of the good playgrounds date from the 1950s, while the new playgrounds as beautiful as they are boring. New playgrounds use fancy materials, have a maximum number of tubes, and every shaped slide you can imagine. But the new slides are slow
The BBC reports that the Bush administration may back off from steel tariffs to avoid a full-scale trade war. Worth watching and listening for: will there be the slightest hint in any announcement that these tariffs were a mistake? Or will the Bush administration continue its infallibility pose even in the face of a policy that has been both
In Fiber to the People (Wired), Lawrence Lessig argues that advanced fiber networks are “natural monopolies” and hence should be backed by local governments as a cost-saving measures, so long as the customers remain the owners (in what sense they are owners is never spelled out). All his arguments are thoroughly addressed in ” The Myth of
In case you didn’t click the link when Professor Garrison first blogged this , this Samuel Brittan piece (from remarks delivered in Vienna!) is very interesting. Brittan rejects the Austrian theory of the business cycle on grounds that we didn’t see a “relative contraction in consumer spending” in the 1990s occuring alongside the credit-fueled
This news item will give the remaining Veblenians out there something to fret about: “So far, the only ‘must have’ item this holiday season is not a toy. It is not an article of clothing. It is not even a specific model of cellphone, or DVD or digital camera. It is a candle that smells like a fig.” Get yours for $19.50. Why $19.95? “We saw that
From MarginalRev comes a link to this very interesting story on a convenience-store owner who was accused of gouging during Hurricane Isabel. “What I did was what the state and federal governments couldn’t do: Stay open and deliver services to the general public.” (Cowen concludes from the story that people hate flexible prices but this sense is
Paul Kasriel discusses a point that Frank Shostak has been drawing attention to: the sudden fall in the money supply, and the reasons for it. Both Shostak and Kasriel agree that if the trend continues, the current “recovery” will be short indeed.
Now, this is interesting. Supachai Panitchpakdi, director general of the World Trade Organization, was asked by USA Today what five books he would want on a deserted island. He lists a book on chess, one by a communist, one by a social democrat, Sophie’s Choice , and: the new Bruce Caldwell book Hayek’s Challenge . The paper comments that Hayek
The debate so far has centered on cultural matters: whether gays have a civil right to marry or whether the traditional understanding of marriage should prevail in the law. If you read the writings by gay-marriage advocates, however, one subject keeps coming up again and again and again : the right to transfer property to a partner without being
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.
