Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Read my new post over at Think Markets , on scientism.

I've been going through Roger Garrison's absolutely wonderful Powerpoint presentations on Keynes versus Hayek (how the heck does he do all that stuff, anyway?!), and the process has brought to the fore something that has been in the back of my mind for a while now: Bob Murphy has referred to himself and me as "heretics" for concluding that a general glut is possible , contra some interpretations of Say's Law. But if we are, we are in good company, as Garrison's models allowing an economy to be "temporarily beyond the PPF" are exactly what Malthus and Sismondi were talking about back in the early nineteenth century -- it is possible for a person, or even the people making up an economy in general, to produce at "too high" a rate, in that the production will only be sold at a loss, and people later will regret having worked so much for the meagre benefits received. In fact, Roger and I, in our 2003 paper on the dot-com boom-and-bust, gave...

making our oven mitts? Because every time I try to buy a pair they either have no thumbs, or thumbs in the middle of the palm, so I'm thinking two alien species are exporting these here for us.

I received this in the mail today: 2010 FEE Prize for best book in Austrian Economics Peter Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics Pirates , New Jersey: Princeton University Press Third, and perhaps most importantly given the goals of the SDAE, Leeson makes an important contribution to the growing literature on the 'economics of anarchy.' This area of research attempts to understand how order can emerge in the absence of a formal state. What mechanisms facilitate interaction and cooperation where formal rules and regulations are either non-existent or dysfunctional? The power of Leeson’s analysis is to illuminate some of the mechanisms creating order where we would least expect it to emerge. Pirates, of course, were criminals—they stole from others and relied on violence where necessary. Given this, it is logical to assume that the anarchy in which pirates operated was disorderly and chaotic. In reality, however, pirate behavior was orderly and cooperative. Fi...

This came out very nicely: 1 lb. ziti 1 lb. leftover turkey, shredded 1 large onion, diced 3 cloves garlic, chopped 3 large carrots, diced 2 tablespoons tomato paste 1 chicken bullion cube 1 can cannellini 1 can stewed tomatoes Italian gouda, Italian fontina, and asiago to taste (roughly 1/4 lb. each) Pepper and Italian herbs to taste Cook ziti per package instructions. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Saute carrots, onion, and garlic in olive oil. Sprinkle with Italian herbs and pepper. Once the carrots are softened and the onion translucent, stir in tomato paste, bullion cube, and half a cup of boiling water. Mix to make a thick sauce and then turn off heat and cover. Rinse cannellini to remove mucus-like liquid that ships in the can. Combine sauteed vegetables, pasta, turkey, tomatoes, and beans in casserole dish. Spread cheese out across top, then cover with foil. Bake for 35 minutes, then remove foil and bake 10 minutes more. Yum!

I recenty ran across, for the umpteenth time, a comment thread where some left-leaning person was saying, "Conservatives actually believe you can INCREASE government revenues by LOWERING taxes." Now, if there is some conservative who thinks you can always raise revenues by lowering taxes, they are obviously nuts. (If the tax is at, say, 1%, you cannot get more revenue by lowering it to 0%.) But if some liberal thinks you can never increase revenues by lowering taxes, they are every bit as nuts. Essentially, the latter position involves the belief that price has no effect on demand. An nice example of a case where raising a tax caused revenues to plunge is the  Smoot-Hawley Tariff . Now, whether Arthur Laffer  was right that, in 1980, taxes were high enough that lowering them would increase revenues is an empirical question. But the notion of the Laffer Curve, meaning that there is some level at which a decrease in taxes will raise revenues, is a simple matter of econom...

the most crude caricature of economism on the part of an economist you wish to make up. But Bryan Caplan can still top you . (Hat tip to Scineram.)

with the new McRib commercials? It looks like the people on screen are enjoying a nice diarrhea sandwich.

My daughter was watching a cartoon with some space alien monsters in it. The brown one with three eyes said to the two little ice-cream-cone monsters, "Sure, your theories were all wrong, but they led you to explore and find out new things." "Emma," I said, "is that the Karl Popper monster?"

Here are PFDs of my PowerPoint presentations on Marx and Menger: Marx Menger The presentations have a bit of animation missing from the PDFs. Feel free to employ anything you find useful for your own lectures, etc. All images are public domain according to Wikipedia. Thanks to Bob Murphy for hosting.

Find out .

Some wonderful quotes from Common Sense , in which Philip Wicksteed explains marginalism as it applies to household management, brought to my attention by Sandra Peart and David Levy: This task of home administration is not of uniform difficulty. Materfamilias will not mind who gets hold of the bread though she will exercise a general watchfulness against its being wasted, but when she has begun her first purchases of new potatoes for the year, she will be very careful to keep the dish under her own direct control and not let one of the children determine, at his own discretion, what is his proper share; for if she did there would be disproportionate gratification and disproportionate privation.

NOT: The above is a picture of Astana, Kazakhstan's new, rationalistically designed capital city. Just look at the life pouring across that central square! (Hat-tip to Peter Hitchens .)

Here : "It is therefore possible to undo the effects of historical circumstances, though the results in this paper indicate that this process can take several decades." So, in other words, we can "undo" the effects of historical circumstances with... a whole bunch of other historical circumstances! But of course, to the author, liberal, capitalist democracy is not a historical condition at all, but the logical pinnacle of human life.

I recently was told about a conversation in which a Popperian assured his interlocutor that, "The only valid form of reasoning is deductive reasoning, so if someone says, 'I'm not using deductive reasoning,' that means they are admitting they are using invalid reasoning." Now, the first bit of stupidity present in this argument is that... not one bit of it is deductive ! In other words, by the arguer's own argument, his argument is itself invalid. When it comes to the practical consequences of believing such rubbish, it is difficult to know what to say. Popperians, of course, regularly employ inductive reasoning, or not one of them would be left alive today. I recall one Popperian telling me, on hearing that I was moving to Hackney (in London), "Do you have any idea what the crime rate is there?" Clearly, this Popperian thought the past crime rate in Hackney would be a good predictor of the future crime rate there, about as plainly an inductiv...

I was attending a philosophy conference at NYU today. I arrived at the registration desk and searched for my badge. I found it, but... "Excuse me," I told the woman working the desk, "this is my badge, but the affiliation is wrong." (They had me from Sarah Lawrence College.) "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "Is the name wrong as well?" I think we could have had a Wittgenstein moment if I had answered, "Yes, the name and affiliation are both wrong, but I'm still sure it's my badge."

the real world looks so strange : "By the way, according to the New York State seat belt law, Police/Fire and Ambulances (along with Taxis, Liveries, and Buses other than School Buses—I wonder what’s up with that) are exempt from having to wear seat belts. Again, control for you and me, but not for the State’s “chosen.” Or perhaps the State just doesn’t love police, firemen, EMTs, cabbies, and bus drivers as much as it loves us?" Perhaps David Kramer is unaware of this, but New York allows anyone, even LRC writers, to ride in buses, cabs, and livery vehicles . So, the "State's chosen" turns out to be... everyone! Hurray!

From Michael Kinsley : "Everybody will be talking in the next few days about the “message” of the elections. They mean, of course, the message from the voters. This is one of the treasured conventions of political journalism. Yesterday, the story was all about artifice and manipulation, the possible effect of the latest attack ad or absurd lie. Today, all that melts away. The election results are deemed to reflect grand historical trends. But my colleague Joe Scarborough got it right in these pages last week when he argued that the 2010 elections, for all their passion and vitriol, are basically irrelevant. Some people are voting Tuesday for calorie-free chocolate cake, and some are voting for fat-free ice cream. Neither option is actually available. Neither party’s candidates seriously addressed the national debt, except with proposals to make it even worse. Scarborough might have added that neither party’s candidates had much to say about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (exce...

In the latest issue of The Cato Journal , Richard L. Gordon reviews The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America by Robert H. Nelson. He first asserts, contrary to the author of the book under review, that "Economic theory is not a religion..." In the very next paragraph he states, "The first is that economics is the only source of sensible appraisal of policies about the environment or other issues." The only source?! I'd say that's a view with which a fundamentalist of any flavour could sympathize.

In a rather interesting article on Islamaphobia , you can find the following: 'Zogby says President Bush may have “kept a lid on” the worst of the backlash after 9/11, however selfishly, by promoting the meme that his military invasions were not a “war on Muslims.”' Sigh. Would there have been anything lost by using the word 'idea' in that sentence, instead of 'meme,' besides an air of trendy, pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo?

Rachel Maddow!

From ESPN.com : "Sanchez and the Jets, though, were explosive enough to score 10 points in the last 2:46 and on the opening drive of OT." So they scored 10 points in the last 2:46 and another 10 on the opening drive of OT? That's a lot of points on one drive! "Detroit got off to a good start and led for much of the game, but couldn't make enough winning plays on both sides of the ball to snap New York's seven-game winning streak on the road." Not only could Detroit not make "enough" winning plays, they couldn't make any. Because, you know, if you make a winning play, you win. And they didn't win.

on procrastination and akrasia in The New Yorker .

For a dynamic, dialectical view of the relationship between individual and society: “to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all... For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body... When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or when one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it." (12:7-12:26) (Hat tip to Patrick J. Deneen .)