Monthly Archives: June 2009
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Traffic Jams and the Free Market
Rush hour traffic in Raleigh gives the mind a lot of time to idly wander, and so was born a thought along the lines of Daniel Klein’s Rinkonomics: the trafficonomy.
Traffic jams are in fact a lot like the free market. This is not a pejorative comparison, as if we could alleviate the jam…
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A Microfederalist Manifesto
Q: What is the fundamental problem with government? A: It is unconstrained. There is no process to achieve the optimal amount of regulation or private sector intervention, and even if it is perchance achieved at one point, there is nothing to keep it there. The line between desirable and abuse of power is not in [...] -
The Ends of Institutions (Or, The Problem with Moral Theories of Government)
Institutions Versus Individuals Among political theorists, there is a debate among those who view the ends of government as protecting natural rights, and those who view its ends as promoting the maximum felicity of its citizens. The dichotomy may seem to be one of moral versus practical concerns, but so far as we define a [...] -
The Role of Physical Piracy in the Market Economy
In discussions about piracy, even among people who are otherwise ok with free piracy – downloading – those who copy CDs or DVDs and physically resell them on the black market are often condemned, to the point that there is a wide consensus on both sides that the outright prohibition of this sort of activity [...]