PolicyMic

Brent Butgereit Monetary policy isn't counted as regulation in the legislative sense, but I see no reason why it should be considered terribly different from, say, price controls. The point is to make prices "regular." Simply mentioning subsidizat...

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• 3 months ago

Brent Butgereit The end of slavery? Women's suffrage? Increasing equality under the law for gays and other minorities? Look, government generally acts in ways that encroach on freedom (for instance, having these laws against certain groups in the first place), ...

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Brent Butgereit If there was actual deregulation of financial markets before the bubble (not the scapegoat of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) the housing bubble wouldn't have happened. What would deregulation look like? Bans on the government support of private fir...

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Brent Butgereit "Concerning human behavior, benevolence and interest, should come before market transactions." Not sure what this means in the context of Smith or Marx. Smith argues that we are able to get benevolent outcomes unintentionally through fol...

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Brent Butgereit "Diminishing marginal returns makes since for smoking, but not for drinking" This doesn't make sense, even as a joke. "'The Invisible Hand' by Adam Smith is sitting right in front of me" It can't be: S...

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Brent Butgereit If the money is not fiat, then any salvagable distinction between value in use and value in exchange would go away.

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Brent Butgereit I'm curious (and perhaps Jon Lewis can elaborate) how the monetary system works in the Walking Dead world. If they have a commodity backed currency then it might be more plausible for the characters to choose $100 over ammo. I'm willing to ...

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Brent Butgereit The use/exchange distinction comes to us in the Labor Theory of Value. The classic problem presented by Adam Smith (though he's not the only one to have believed in it) is the water-diamond paradox. I won't rehash it here, but I note that t...

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Brent Butgereit The first two sections are correct, but virtually no economist ascribes to the use/exchange distinction in value. The subjective theory of value killed this idea long ago but apparently it's back from the dead. Does the show have anything on...

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Brent Butgereit 1) Are there perfect measures for evaluating whether a person should be fired that would be categorically different *in finding* in schools than businesses? 2) I don't think anyone disagrees. 3) Perhaps, but firing people who aren't doi...

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Brent Butgereit So you don't actually disagree with the motion that "Bad Teachers Should Be Fired"? You seem to only be saying that firing bad teachers won't have great massive consequences. (Actually supporting school choice is the same as firin...

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Brent Butgereit The link says the study you reference is a working paper. Has it been peer-reviewed yet?

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Brent Butgereit It takes a great deal to offend me. Your point is an important one. There are many reasons to feel personally connected to the legislation that affects us and those we love. As human beings we are hard-wired to care about the people we can see. T...

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Brent Butgereit Your example demonstrates exactly why an issue such as regulatory capture is such a powerful blow against most cases for intervention. Given that we live in a society with many wants which can change over time, it's incredibly important that we ...

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Brent Butgereit As long as property rights are secure, there is no amount of money that a person can possess that will force you to buy things from them. You always have the power to refuse. People then have to persuade you do something you otherwise wouldn't d...

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Brent Butgereit That last point is certainly untrue. I am not free to live in that environment nor do I buy "Love it or leave it" as a meaningful response to theft and interventionist meddling. These trends existed long before OSHA, the NHSA, the FDA, a...

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Brent Butgereit This does not mean that the government should *never* intervene (although, you could argue that with a few additions to my initial argument). A civil legal system might be such an instance. But it does mean that any time you want to argue that the go...

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Brent Butgereit Of course not. The claim was made that we should have governments involve themselves in the economic affairs and freedoms of the people. It is for the people who want to control others to justify their actions, not for those who are under such contro...

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Brent Butgereit The difference between command and directed economies is only in degree. The same principles that show why both fail. With respect to Japan, the question that follows is "do you want a regulatory regime which allows the rich to lobby for their i...

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Brent Butgereit "The same 'EVIL BIG BROTHER' which regulates all our lives performs multiple functions with value to the majority." Suppose I robbed you and in return gave you a nice, ripe banana. You happen to like bananas and you would have ...

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Brent Butgereit To add to what R. Hash said, Japan's Lost Decade was a result of loose monetary policy in the 1980s (creating an investment bubble) and a series of stimuluses in the 1990s (slowing capital reallocation). China's growth is a result of the go...

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Brent Butgereit So your response to there being too much lobbying and too little transparency is to grow the organization that creates opportunities for lobbying and becomes less transparent the larger it gets? If we ignore this problem of putting your ideas int...

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Brent Butgereit I believe Niels Bohr also won a Nobel Prize. Your comments on CEI may be true, but I would criticize their report rather than make simple ad hominem attacks. If you like democracy, I can't see why you wouldn't want society more market or...

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Brent Butgereit I apologize for not being clearer. I'm a fan of information being available, but is having every piece of information worth the cost? When confronted with complex issues (e.g. why it is safe to use ammonia in burger production) they opt for easy...

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• 4 months ago

Brent Butgereit When you ask someone who is a toxicologist whether arsenic is deadly, they will usually say it is. When you as a toxicologist the same question, they will be more likely to say it depends on the amount. It's not clear how unsafe pink slime is - ...

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• 4 months ago

Brent Butgereit People will only rely on proxies for such skills. They would hire someone who already worked in a grocery store as opposed to someone who never could because they were put out by the minimum wage. Your second point works in my favor. I was arguing th...

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Brent Butgereit How can you support small business and the minimum wage? Small businesses create jobs and wealth; the minimum wage rises the wage for some workers, but restricts others from competing in the short and long run. You want small businesses and you want ...

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Brent Butgereit Are you referring to the argument that if you had an inelastic supply curve, you could increase the aggregate earnings for the workers who keep their jobs? Also a surplus supply of labor might suggest elasticity as it would be easier to substitute wo...

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Brent Butgereit Raising the price of labor will reduce the amount employed. It will also likely cause businesses to raise prices to cover their costs. The areas which have the highest cost of living are also, not coincidentally, the same areas with the highest restr...

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Brent Butgereit There is a difference between a vote and voice. Voting is mental self-indulgence - it's not productive and it only makes one feel good. I'm using my voice here. My message: don't waste your time voting. You'll feel happier you did...

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Brent Butgereit I'm not sure wishing death and destruction does well to advance your position. I also doubt it will be highly effective. Good ideas in economics must be relearned every generation. The bad ones need no help. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/wo...

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Brent Butgereit We often tend to all be losers in a democracy whether we vote or not (see "Myth of the Rational Voter"). Even if I kept at voting again and again, my vote wouldn't be making a difference - if I didn't vote, the outcome would b...

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Brent Butgereit That isn't a lead, it's a rounding error. No candidates has won the GOP nomination without winning South Carolina since 1980. Claiming the importance of one particular statistic does not make it so. Romney's past makes him look too...

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Brent Butgereit Media outlets of all stripes keep expressing their desire to make each state primary seem more relevant as Republicans go through them. Assuming the "Obama v. GR" analysis is valid, Romney winning FL won't much help him win the other s...

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Brent Butgereit My apologies. While I do think that some people have opposition to biased in national media outlets, their actual concern is not that they are biased per se, but that their bias is "wrong" in that they disagree with it. Facetiousness is dif...

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Brent Butgereit It is facile to say that people have a problem with the media because they are biased. It's that they have the wrong opinions and lie (or something close) - or so people rationalize. You're right in noting that as we have greater plurality...

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Brent Butgereit The "domestic vs. international" monopoly distinction would be true if it were not so difficult to move between countries. The more restrictions governments place on who can live in the country, the more "monopolistic" other gover...

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• 4 months ago