Tag: the state

Hello, Thursday!

You probably didn’t read “Bleak House” by Dickens anytime recently (if you did, and you actually read the whole thing, congratulations!) but if you recall, there’s a rather funny line in it that I thought of this morning. Well, it isn’t an extremely funny line. Dickens was good at introducing comic relief characters who were, really, very funny. No one but a Scrooge could help laughing at Mrs. Jiggleby and her children tumbling up and down the stairs while she devotes all her attentions to helping these poor orphaned children on the bank of some obscure river in Africa. But…

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An Ordinary Tuesday Morning

After contemplating the title of this post, I realized that it isn’t really true. Every Tuesday is different, in some sense, from the last Tuesday, so how can I say it is “ordinary”? But at least it means that nothing extraordinary has happened today. My mother is waiting for me to clean up my room. You see, my room is where people iron their clothes, so the ironing board is always set up. It is right next to my closet (if you can call it that…more like a cubby hole) so the ironing board becomes very handy for throwing my…

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Holiday Special on Economics Tutoring!

I’m feeling pretty generous right now, so I decided to offer a special deal on the tutoring rates. If you aren’t really sure how it would go and don’t want to commit to anything, I will give you two weeks of tutoring absolutely free. You email me at econtutor(at)savannahliston(dot)com and tell me what you’re interested in. Maybe something like, “you know, I don’t really understand all of this about QE2 and the Fed…what is it all about?” Or “I had to read part of The Wealth of Nations for school and I don’t know what to think of Adam Smith…

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The Price of the Housing Boom

Yesterday we were driving through what we call the “West Side” of Rockford. This is the place you really wouldn’t like to drive through late at night. This the place where you wouldn’t want to  stray from the main road but just get through as fast as possible. We’ll be driving through there quite often now (it is our new route to church) and so I wanted to make some sort of lesson out of it for the girls. I pointed to the crummy run-down apartments and said that was probably a result of rent control. I explained how making…

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Man, Economy, and State…and Other Ramblings

So yesterday I actually got around to starting “Man, Economy, and State” by Murray Rothbard. I’ve meant to start it for a couple weeks. I wasn’t exactly procrastinating, but just…well, um, I didn’t get to it. It is one of those books you can’t exactly take with you in the car, or read while eating lunch, or read in bed as you drift off to sleep. It is a bit too big for that, at 2 and 1/2 inches thick and 1,438 pages. But I opened it up yesterday, slowly and gently. You know how some movies and songs are…

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To Gouge or Not to Gouge?

You are probably familiar with the term “price gouging.”  I’m talking today about price gouging in a specific market where demand for a good has suddenly skyrocketed. For instance, after a natural distaster demand for water, food, flashlights, etc…becomes very high. Wikipedia says, “Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities much higher than is considered reasonable or fair.” Now the obvious problem is, who decides what price is reasonable and fair? But there’s a more fundamental problem than that even. Let’s take an example like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina….

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Our Nice Local Library

I use this title in two senses. Firstly, I used to really like our local library. It was close. The people were friendly. There were good books. The second sense is a sarcastic sense because you are about to find out it isn’t so nice anymore. What isn’t nice about it? 1) They have so many people working there that it isn’t like coming in to a friendly and familiar face. Often it is someone I don’t know at all. Sometimes they are friendly, and other times they aren’t. Maybe it is just because they are busy. Or the guilt…

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A Crime Without a Victim: Is It Possible?

I had an interesting discussion with my family  this morning. It started out as a tirade against the speed limits. This is how it started: Point One: The government says that when you drive over the prescribed limit, there’s a greater likelihood that you will harm yourself, your passengers and also others on the road. My point: Why stop there? Point Two: Carrying on many conversations with people of various ages while trying to drive is distracting. It is harder to concentrate when your two-year old is saying something quite incomprehensible but she really wants you to understand what it…

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What I’m Thankful For

Since this is, after all, a sort of political/economic blog, I’m going to put a free market twist on what I’m thankful for. This is not in any particular order, I just write as things come to me. I’m thankful for… – Apple and their amazing and beautiful computers that make life so much fun and so much easier than Microsoft could ever do. – The Mises Institute and their relentless dedication to doing interesting things, sharing knowledge, and of course, being nice to me. – My friends who agree with me because it makes me feel like I’m not…

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