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My colleague Pete Boettke and GMU Econ doctoral student Kyle O’Donnell have just written a paper entitled “The Social Responsibility of Economists.”

Hats off to Marlo Lewis for finding and (re)posting this hilarious spoof of some of climate-change’s True Believers.  [Note: I have no strong feelings about the reality, the magnitude, or the cause(s) of climate change.  I’m not a climate scientist.  From what I read, I suspect that the earth’s temperature – however appropriately measured – has indeed risen somewhat over the course of the 20th century or so, although this temperature rise also seems to have stopped so far during the 21st century.  But whether or not this account is accurate, and regardless of cause(s), I have little doubt that bourgeois people operating in free, competitive, private-property-based markets will more than adequately deal with any problems – and take great advantage of any blessings – caused by climate change.  No plausible change in the earth’s temperature can possibly pose as great a hazard to humanity’s well-being as that posed by governments given great rein to ‘solve’ problems posed by changes in the earth’s temperature.]

Marlo’s post shares something with this post by Mike Munger.

Here’s the great Arnold Kling on mortgage-market ‘reform’ and the rent-seeking that will surely infect it.

Here’s an interview (in two parts) with Richard Ebeling on Austrian economics.  First and second.

Richard Rahn explains some of the harm caused by (overt as well as covert) protectionism – that is, some of the harm caused by policies used by governments to forcibly shrink the options open to their own citizens as consumers and as owners of businesses that buy inputs.

Art Carden on I, Beef Jerky.

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As Hayek warned in today’s Q.O.D., attempts by government to protect group A from competition cause harm to group B – and, in this case, in a way that also runs counter to the Obama administration’s mercantilist obsession with increasing American exports.  (HT Kevin Kennedy)

Note that in this instance the unintended ill consequences of Uncle Sam’s restrictions on Americans’ purchases of Chinese-made solar panels would have occurred even if the Chinese government did not retaliate by slapping high retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-supplied polysilicon.  Such retaliation (unfortunate for the Chinese people, yet perfectly predictable as a matter of trade ‘policy’) does indeed make matters worse for American producers of polysilicon.  But because polysilicon is an important input used to make solar panels, Uncle Sam’s protectionist policy results in higher prices for solar panels and, hence, a reduction in the quantity of solar panels demanded.  Fewer solar panels are produced – meaning, almost surely, lower demand for American-made polysilicon, and definitely a reduction in American exports of polysilicon.

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In this short video from LearnLiberty, Jim Otteson – one of my favorite contemporary philosophers – explains the importance of protecting privacy against intrusions from the likes of the NSA.

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… is from page 153 of the 2007 Definitive Edition (Bruce Caldwell, ed.) of F.A. Hayek’s classic 1944 volume, The Road to Serfdom:

But the policies which are now followed everywhere, which hand out the privilege of [income] security, now to this group and now to that, are nevertheless rapidly creating conditions in which the striving for security tends to become stronger than the love of freedom.  The reason for this is that with every grant of security to one group the insecurity of the rest necessarily increases.  If you guarantee to some a fixed part of a variable cake, the share left to the rest is bound to fluctuate proportionally more than the size of the whole.  And the essential element of security which the competitive system offers, the great variety of opportunities, is more and more reduced.

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Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:

Eugene Robinson condemns racial profiling to fight crime (“Positive steps on ‘stop and frisk,’ drug arrests,” August 20), yet he applauds racial profiling to encourage minority enrollment in colleges (“Supreme Court caution on affirmative action,” June 25).

Government efforts to fight crime aren’t identical to government efforts to promote education.  But the burden – and it’s a heavy one – should be on those people, such as Mr. Robinson, who propose racial profiling for some government activities but who oppose racial profiling for other government activities.  Why do the angels that allegedly inspire officials on some occasions to judge people benevolently by the color of their skin flee to be replaced by the devils – or, at least, by the ordinary run of human imperfections and biases – that prompt officials on other occasions to judge people maliciously by the color of their skin?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030

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… is from page 75 of Israel Kirzner’s excellent 1997 monograph, How Markets Work: Disequilibrium, Entrepreneurship and Discovery; it is the final paragraph of this monograph:

But we live in an open-ended world, in which as yet unseen opportunities always exist for improving human well-being through the discovery of new resources or of new ways of deploying resources productively.  So the creative character of the actions taken alertly to notice and to grasp the opportunities should be recognized.  An enormous volume of pure entrepreneurial activity takes place in capitalist society; a theory of economic justice must be grounded in an analytical framework which can accommodate such activity, not in a framework built upon the premise that no scope whatever exists for such activity.  The theory of entrepreneurial discovery drastically alters conventional conclusions regarding capitalist distributive justice.

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… is from page 2 of Rose George’s 2013 Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, The Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes On Your Back, Gas In Your Car, and Food On Your Plate:

But who looks behind a television now and sees the ship that brought it?  Who cares about the man who steered your breakfast cereal through winter storms?  How ironic that the more ships have grown in size, the less space they now take up in our imagination.

It is one of the most historically unique and amazing features of life in modern market economies: almost everything that each of us daily consumes – stuff mundane to us, such as toothpaste, laundry detergent, underwear, houses with solid floors, walls, and roofs, motor transportation, blueberries and pineapple year-round in Boston and Berlin – is stuff that no one person knows how to make.  It’s not just that you didn’t make and don’t know how to make, say, the drip-coffee maker that you used this morning to brew your cup of coffee.  No one knows how to make that coffee maker.  And nor is all of the knowledge necessary to make that coffee maker, and to get it at reasonably cost into your kitchen, available in any one place or to any one self-consciously cooperating group of minds.

Of course, there is an organization of people – working, say, for a company called Krups – in which there exists the knowledge of how to assemble various component parts – wires, metal, glass carafes, heating elements, and so on – into a coffee maker.  But Krups (as is the case with the likes of Braun, and Cuisinart, and Black & Decker) only does the final assembly (and, perhaps, had a creative idea or two for just how to assemble component parts together into an unusually good coffee maker).  But tap into all of the knowledge in all of the brains of all of the people who have ever worked for Krups and you’ll not get one one-billionth of all the knowledge that is necessary to transforms all of the materials that are ‘in’ your coffee maker from their raw stage and into the machine that now sits patiently on your kitchen counter, ready to allow you to brew more delicious coffee within minutes, with no sweat or danger, and with just a few small and minor muscle movements on your part.

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A corporate CEO proclaims that his concern is for the public interest while he endorses restrictionist trade policies that would increase his own company’s profits.  (HT Mark Perry)

Alas, Milton Friedman was correct when he observed that

The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.

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Here’s a letter to Investvine:

Regarding your report on the U.S. International Trade Commission’s decision to punitively tax Americans who buy shrimp from certain foreign countries (“US plans to raise shrimp import taxes,” August 18): let’s describe this decision as what it is, namely, government-orchestrated theft.

If American shrimpers waved guns in consumers’ faces and threatened to shoot if these consumers insist on buying low-priced imported shrimp rather than buy higher-priced domestic shrimp, such thievery would be punished with jail time.  Fortunately for American shrimpers and many other domestic producers, they need not themselves engage in such distasteful and risky activities.  Uncle Sam does it for them.

Bureaucrats in Washington – at the behest of domestic producers – threaten force against consumers who would continue to buy low-priced imports rather than pay the higher prices demanded by domestic producers.  Just as if the domestic producers themselves wielded the guns, when government does so consumers are forced to hand over money against their will to these producers in exchange for nothing other than not being roughed up, held captive, or killed.

Calling government’s supply of such thieving services “trade policy” doesn’t alter the essence of what’s going on: theft carried out with threats of violence.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030