Extreme weather often results in power loss to large numbers of people. I’ve experienced multi-day outages from thunderstorms, blizzards, and ice storms in the midwest and hurricanes in the southeast. Most Americans probably recall similar outages. That’s what happens when you string wires and transformers all over the place then pray nothing knocks them down or stresses them out.
Tag: markets
City Shuts Downs Preschoolers’ Farm Stand Citing Zoning Violations
It’s like something out of The Onion: city manager shuts down preschool farm stand out of fear that, if allowed, “we could end up with one on every corner.”
Is There a Market for an ISA Marketplace?
There is so much that could be done to better allocate money across time slices to get capital to its highest time value location for individuals. When you need money isn’t always when you have it and vice versa. I’ve blogged before about a world where you can sell shares in yourself and securitize your future potential wealth.
Great Tools for Teaching Kids Economics and Liberty
Whenever my children express an interest in economics or are curious about the ideals of freedom and responsibility, I can barely contain my excitement. It wasn’t until college that I discovered, and fell in love with, economics, and it wasn’t until much later that I understood liberty as a life philosophy. Fortunately, I can avoid stifling their budding interest by drawing demand curves or quoting Hayek and Hazlitt (though I’ve been known to do both!) and turn to some outstanding resources just for kids. Designed to introduce economic principles and the foundations of a free society to young children, these tools are interesting, engaging, and easy-to-understand—for children and adults alike!
Dominance: Material vs. Rhetorical
Do the rich dominate our society? In one sense, they obviously do. Rich people run most of the business world, own most of the wealth, and are vastly more likely to be powerful politicians. In another sense, however, the rich aren’t dominant at all. If you get in public and loudly say, “Rich people are great. We owe them everything. They deserve every penny they’ve got – and more. People who criticize the rich are just jealous failures,” almost everyone will recoil in horror.
Congenial Communications—Another Miracle of the Market
Through the ages, many observers have noted how markets promote peaceful and mutually enriching dealings among people of varying languages, customs, religions, and backgrounds. Voltaire’s account of this matter is a classic. I rediscover this time-honored truth virtually every day while living in Mexico.
The Broader Effects of Trade and Tech
My personal view is that the broad social effects of international trade, technological progress, and immigration are all, on balance, positive. For immigration, I’ve done my homework; for trade and tech, however, I’m only guessing.
What (Other) Economists Think About Democrats’ Education Plans
I was curious what these NPR-interviewed economists might say about the Democratic presidential candidates’ education plans, which involve funneling more money into a government system of mass compulsory schooling.
What Does Aggregated Information Mean?
There’s another crypto bull run going on, after a long ‘crypto winter’. No one really knows why the prices are climbing, though everyone will do their best to figure it out and tell you. There’s nothing that has really changed since the last big run up and dip. In fact, the brand leader BTC has arguably gotten technologically less feasible since then.
Why Be a Peasant When You Can Be a Knight Errant?
There wasn’t much attraction then to the idea of serving a lord, tying down to a fixed point of earth, and living on the good graces of the powerful. But when we’ve chosen our careers, we’ve generally chosen to commit our whole working lives to serving on the land of another while a whole realm of people with quests awaits.