Mere Economics (Page 2)

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Harsh, Fluorescent Lighting, Not to Mention Microplastics

When Art or I point to Walmart as a marvel of the modern world, we often find ourselves fending off objections. What about the “harsh, fluorescent” lighting inside your typical Walmart? We’re tempted to respond by asking, “Ever heard of a First World Problem?” While snarky, our response captures

The Math isn't Mathing

As the kids these days say. Scott Burns and I offer our third and fourth installations on the ongoing trade war over at the Independent Institute. Here's a taste: Today’s tariff defenders should be credited for looking to history to justify their proposals. Wise men should try

The Trade War Endgame

Once again, over at the Independent Institute, Scott Burns and I tackle the recent trade goings-on. This time, we focus on the contradictory rationales that have been offered for the administration's trade policies. A snippet: Governments need to raise revenue. They also need to buttress their economy and

The Market and the Family of God

Sometimes people balk at the idea of a society based on “abstract,” “cold,” and “impersonal” rules. Why not, they say, run society like a family? The church is the family of God, and after all, no (good) father charges his children for food or diapers. A well-functioning family runs on

It's the Small Stuff: Look Around At Our World of Wonders

I've long loved Don Boudreaux's metaphor of the prosperity pool. Every new innovation, convenience, or increase in output is a drop in the prosperity pool: "a modern, prosperous market economy... is largely the result of many small innovations, each of which is not very significant

Sennholz Sense

When all the mysticism is stripped away, the people who comprise the government (the legislators, administrators, judges, and policemen), are guided by human interests, desires, beliefs, notions, and prejudices, just like other people. They have neither superhuman wisdom nor extraordinary virtue. From his "Degenerate Democracy."

The "Strong Tendencies" of Economics?

We live in an orderly physical universe governed by unyielding, unforgiving non-negotiables like Newton’s universal law of gravitation and mathematical regularities like pi and e. Virtually no one denies this, and doing so will rightly get you labeled a kook. We also live in an orderly social universe governed

In This House, We Believe Demand Curves Slope Downward to the Right I

This series of posts is adapted from an essay originally published on my personal blog, A Fuller's Soap. During graduate school lecturing, a friend who I won’t name once joked, “We’ve covered downward sloping demand curves—what else is there to teach them?” Less flippantly, Armen

The Global Division of Knowledge Improved on "Batman"

My youngest loves the Batman movies and video games, so when it was his night to choose a move, he chose the 1989 version of Batman starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger. I was surprised at how poorly it held up. Everything seemed hokey, the special effects made

Price Controls: The Greatest Hits IV

Economists thought price controls had been vanquished, but we live in a world where people are warming up to them. In this series, based on an article originally published at The Independent Institute, I'll revisit some of the craziest consequences of price controls. Price controls lower the costs