Archive for 3 December 2006
The Collected Works of Armen Alchian
| Nicolai Foss |
It has been said that “Armen Alchian’s output may be sparse and informal, but it has been among the most influential.” Still, his “virtuoso work on neoclassical price theory” has been sufficiently voluminous that his collected works run 1,620 pages!
The two volumes that contain all these pages were published in November by Liberty Fund at the ridiculously low price of $15 for the set. Over the years Liberty Fund has published an unbelievable amount of true classics in economics, law, history, philosophy and classical liberal scholarship in general at absolute bargain prices. (more…)
Who Really Cares?
| Nicolai Foss |
Danish party politics is essentially all a variation on one basic theme. Thus, we have extreme left social democrats, less lefty social democrats, middle-of-the-road social democrats, and conservative social democrats. The conservatism of the latter, currently in power, lies in their wish to keep the total tax burden at its current level (which given the recently announced Swedish tax cuts will make Denmark the World leader in income taxation). The other social democrats essentially wish to let the tax burden increase, and few see any problems with a marginal tax rate that goes into the 70s and beyond. All in the name of equality, of course.
Recently, the minister of social affairs made a major faux pas that upset virtually everyone. She argued that economic equality should not be seen as an independent policy goal. Her political life barely survived the media turmoil that immediately arose. The predictable “jungle law,” “heartless market mentality,””egoistic conservatism,” etc. labels were applied to the minister’s apostasy. The moral outrage was immense.
Enter Arthur C. Brook’s Who Really Cares? The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism which I am reading at the moment. It amounts to a frontal, data-based attack on the ideology that underlies redistributionism, that is,”in lieu of statist redestribution, nobody would really care for the poor, and most certainly not conservatives and libertarians.” (more…)
Organizations and Markets 
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