Assorted links

I almost feel embarrassed for Romer. What kind of reasoning is that? If I follow her, her “point” is that people are not staying unemployed because of structural changes that need to take place in our economy, but because none of the unrestructured firms are hiring. Huh?

Romer and The Economist magazine agree with Keynes that an increase in G will “boost” the economy. This is what Hayek called “constructivism” or “scientism”. Why anyone should think that government officials spending other people’s money on yet other groups of people would without question “boost” the economy is a question that Keynesians, neo-Keynesians, and Romer never ask. Hell, Romer thinks “cash for clunkers” was wealth enhancing; I wonder if she thinks the pig slaughter during the Great Depression was wealth enhancing?

In what meaningful way is the modern system of trial by lawyers (“champions” for hire) different from trial by battle? The jury, usually carefully selected to exclude anyone with true domain expertise, merely adds an additional level of randomness.

The jury, usually carefully selected to exclude anyone with true domain expertise, merely adds an additional level of randomness.

Hopefully with a hint of the community in a jury’s deliberations. A “hint” that is a major reason to have juries.

“Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round.”
-GK Chesterton

Spencer – the pigs were already raised. So all the costs involved in doing so were sunk costs. The market signal might have been that it was uneconomic to raise the pigs at all, but as they were already raised we couldn’t get those costs back. So, then the efficient thing to do is to forget about the money you’ve already spent, sell the pigs for what they went for, and gotten that value.

In the longer-term, the market signal is to raise/grow something other than pigs.

The Melanie Reid column on breaking your back is a poignant
illustration of how a sudden event, in this case one riders must fear
but perhaps bury in the recesses of the mind, can transform one’s
prespective on the most ordinary things, things one took uttterly
for granted before. She can still think lucidly and write absorbingly.
In a different field Stephen Hawking embodies the triumph of mind.
Hope Melanie Reid recovers as much of her former self as is possible.
Christopher Reeve, who knew physical paralysis, devoted a good many
years to finding new ways to recovery.