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.)