Tim asked, why not Human Action?

Human Action is a great book(tome) but it is too dry a read and will disinterest many of the people that visit the site. I picked volume four because it is over an exciting and misunderstood period, the revolutionary war. I also happen to be reading Gates of Fire, so I suppose I’m in a war mood. Although, if this goes well, I’m not opposed to reading sections of Human Action.

With nearly ever politician and man on the street proclaiming their undying love for the founding fathers,the spirit of America and revolution, this might be the perfect opportunity to read a complete history of colonial America.

If you want to order the book you can do it from Amazon or Mises Store. I can’t attest to the content of the book, but the construction of the book is pretty nice.

Alternatively, all four volumes are available online. Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4

It will probably be a week before I begin reading. However, I’ll make a schedule in the next day or two.

Comment or email me any suggestions you have.

The Republicans just might not repeat the mistakes of 2000, 2004 and 2008 by nominating a non-leftist.

This has got to be some sort of tell-tale; don’t expect airports to become anymore pleasant anytime soon. The toy is a manifestation of an American security fetish; it is indicative of an appalling faith in government. Other than foiling plots at clean teeth and hydration, airport security fails utterly to detect hidden weapons. Now, I would never dream of accusing a government employee of efficiency, but when your failure rate is as high as 95% one has to seriously question these sorts of security schemes.

He’s now taking his pitch directly to the public—and trying to sell the sweeping package to lawmakers’ constituents.

I won’t bother going through usual lecture on prices, opportunity and the inevitable failure of these grandiose government plans. What is more important is that Obama will derive his political power from the unwashed constituency; just as FDR did. Like FDR, Obama takes office during an economic depression. Both ride a wave of popular support. Who knows we might even get fireside chats out of this debacle, won’t that be a treat for the children!

FDR was continually elected, despite being in the midst and the cause of America’s Great Depression. How will Obama fair? My guess is that he is already attempting to build up the plebeian support for this very reason. Expect one economic catastrophe after another.

Spontaneous order is perhaps the simplest and most misunderstood concept in economics. Spontaneous order is a coincidence of wants; acting upon this is called trade. I want a store’s ginger ale, the store wants my two dollars; I prefer to have the ginger ale instead of two dollars, and the store prefers to have two dollars rather than the ginger ale. We then physically trade the goods and an ordering has occurred. This simple example holds for all voluntary transactions; even those of land and buildings. This may seem a bit like a lecture to an economic tenderfoot but keep in mind, this escapes even those who hold a Nobel Prize in economics. The importance of this lesson cannot be underestimated.

Cities are nothing more than a large collection of the above sorts of trade. The reasons people seek cities are as sundry as the people. It is only important to know that they desire to cohabit or work within the city. This desire or want lends itself to a coincidence of wants and therefore to trade. The aging city dweller may want to leave the city for more open spaces; the young entrepreneur believes the population of the city will boom and there will be an urgent need for housing. The two parties trade and the city now has a slightly different ordering. In this respect cities are no different than a community of distant farm houses or the largest metropolis.

Cities and rural towns seem to be treated differently as if there are two sets of economic laws governing them. However, no logical line can be drawn, both are simply people engaging in trade. It is because of this that case studies into specific cities are worthless. One need not know how Budapest fairs under government intervention to make a conclusion on how New York or St. Louis will do under the same sort of intervention. Failing to realize this will lead an otherwise capable human being into tremendous displays of buffoonery. Consider the following from Paul Krugman, this year’s Nobel prize winner in economics:

At least New York’s transit system allows those who can’t afford to live in the glamorous parts of the city to commute to jobs. Imagine being poor in a sprawling heartland city with no rapid transit and a poor quality bus system. Central New Jersey is part of the Zoned Zone, but less expensive than the city; still, manual workers can’t afford to live anywhere closer than Trenton, and I can’t imagine how they get to their jobs.

The emotion that Krugman expressed is typical of many economists, even amongst those without such a strong sense of social justice. If government had not intervened in New York, what would have happened?

Since cities emerge from a coincidence of wants and a vast matrix of trade, one can reason that any interference in this process will by necessity distort otherwise voluntary transactions. Trade is voluntary; both parties benefit from the action. Think of a pond disturbed by a boulder falling into it, crest and troughs now exist instead of a tranquil surface. Government intervention within a city is no different. By forcing one man to engage in an action he otherwise would not have, one party benefits at the expense of the other party; a true zero sum scheme. Consider the case of Times Square. Once Times Square was mall of pornography, now it is as kid friendly and colorful as the oddly placed Disney store that represents this transformation. On the surface, it appears better in it’s newer state. However, what is forgotten is the cost to the people who were forced out, the shop owners and customers. If Disney or anyone else wanted to transform Times Square, why didn’t they purchase it from the pornography shops? The answer to this question is precisely the reason why the transformation of Times Square is so onerous. People wanted porn in Times Square more than they wanted a Disney shop. By government’s forceful action a group of people benefited, but only at the expense of another, more economically vested group of people. New York city is poorer because of it.

This applies to all types of government intervention, not just zoning laws. Subsidies function in much the same way by forcing people to make choices at the margin out of the market. It is perhaps this reason that so many urban cities are experiencing a mass exodus for the sprawling suburban wilds which are less regulated. It is also for this reason that those who believe one can plan a perfectly ordered city are the same that would denounce these “sprawlers” as demon kin and attempt to force them back into the city.

Urban revitalization or new-urbanism is one of these ways. Proponents of these seek to order an urban environment by what they feel it should look like. These utopian ne’er-do-wells dazzle the masses with charts, graphs and numbers supposedly showing the optimum amount of population density, coffee shops, stoops, automobiles, distances from work and pretty much any other facet of a person’s visible life. It shouldn’t come as a surprise this movement is a grand failure; for all the same reasons explained above.

Cities are natural and organic things arising from an ordering that is never planned, but ordered nevertheless. Government intervention, in whatever flavor, only disturbs this process. If you look upon your city and find something that just doesn’t seem to fit, chances are it doesn’t and some city planner, rent-seeker, or new urbanist zealot is behind it.

One hardened criminal speaking to another:

“What are you in for?”

“Not eating all my vegetables.”

“Don’t you know there are people STARVING in China!”

In a logical sense there is no ‘waste’. A person may choose to not eat all their vegetables and discard the rest into the trashcan. He does so because he feels discarding the vegetables is a better use than: shipping them to China, eating them, throwing them in a compost, turning them into biofuel and using the biofuel to power your converted Obama campaign wagon. The word ‘waste’ is therefore a judgment of misuse by an outside party.

Like smoking and so many other ‘hot topics’, this issue is extremely simple. One party is attempting to impose it’s will onto another’s property because they don’t like what they are doing with it.

A group interested in forming a local currency will meet at 4 p.m. Sunday at The Caring Place, 931 W. Hamilton St., Allentown, to discuss how to make, market and distribute it. The meeting is open to the public.

They seem to be modeling this after the Ithaca Hour, a local New York currency that is more egalitarian masturbation than legitimate money. It’s not to say I don’t support a free-market in money, it’s that I have doubts if this particular product will be any good.

The article claims that making your own money is not illegal. In their case, it might be legal because their care and share currency is a joke. However, serious attempts at competing with the government’s monopoly on money will be met with federal raids and confiscation of your gold and silver.

Also, I’m trying to figure out if categories are useful or not. Let me know if you would like me to start using categories or to scrap them.