Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

Anti-market bias, unemployment and immigration

Economist Bryan Caplan discusses the important topic of market-clearing wages. Why are wages not falling during the recession in order to establish equilibrium and full employment? Caplan gives an answer that seems common sense but receives little attention from professional economists and politicians. Is labor market rigidity a market failure?  I’m afraid so.  But strangely [...]

Randomness and business cycles

Todd A. Knoop’s Recessions and Depressions: Understanding Business Cycles contains a useful observation about the effect of random shocks on business cycles that merits quotation: It might seem strange that random shocks to productivity can create business cycle swings. Shouldn’t every negative shock be quickly offset by some positive shock? The answer is, no. Economists [...]

Assumptions in economic science

Economists are often taken to task for creating models that employ assumptions that are not consistent with reality. Such reality checks are important and can protect economists from making policy recommendations that may follow from their models but not from empirical observation. A good example is the private provision of public goods. Most orthodox economic [...]

The political philosophy of bailout

All politics is redistributive. Although this is often hidden from view through appeals to the social contract, democracy, and the common good, the recent attempts to reward unsound business practices with taxpayers’ money make even the most sophisticated appeal to the “common good” look suspicious. Although advocates of liberty have offered persuasive accounts about the [...]

Social contract, free ride

The publisher Liberty Fund has republished Anthony de Jasay’s book “Social Contract, Free Ride: A Study of the Public Goods Problem.” In this book, de Jasay, one of the most original and sharpest political philosophers of our age, offers a critical review of the public goods argument for the state. He argues that a) economists [...]