Benjamin Powell – Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy
Powell has the audacity to evaluate policies by their results, not their intentions. In this book, anti-sweatshop activists come off poorly. Most of their favored policies, despite good intentions, have lousy results. The concluding chapters contain a host of economically literate alternatives, from freeing trade and immigration restrictions to cultural openness and exchange. Integration, not segregation.
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Posted in Books, Economics, International, Uncategorized
Richard Posner – Antitrust Law, Second Edition
A foundational text in modern antitrust regulation. From the 1890 Sherman Act up until about the late 1960s, antitrust policy was strictly for lawyers and politicians. Posner, though a lawyer, incorporated economic analysis into antitrust questions. This was a controversial departure at the time, and came to be called the Chicago School approach.
Unlike more populist analysts, Posner placed results above aesthetics. Do large market share, mergers, tying, charging high or low prices, and more cause consumer harm? If so, then antitrust enforcement is appropriate. If not, then not. It is an empirical question, not an emotional one.
The consumer welfare standard displaced the previous Brandeisian “big is bad” standard. Posner’s work is vulnerable to criticism on public choice grounds, and his command of economic analysis not perfect. But his influence has been largely positive, and greatly improved policy outcomes in an area badly in need of reform.
The story is not over, though. The Trump administration and progressive activists would both like to revive big is bad; the coming years will see who prevails in this next chapter.
On a personal note, back in college I once had lunch at the same table as Posner. This would have been around the time this book’s second edition came out, though I don’t recall it being discussed. The conversation mostly revolved around prescription drug reimportation regulations, a hot issue at the time. Had I been more knowledgeable about Posner’s place in the law-and-economics movement, I would have loved to pick his brain about improving antitrust policy and other legal areas.
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Posted in Antitrust, Books, Competition, Economics, Law, Uncategorized
Congress and President Trump passed a spending bill to avoid another shutdown, but President Trump’s national emergency declaration over a non-emergency provides a troubling precedent that future presidents could also abuse, regardless of how this battle plays out in the courts. Republicans are forgetting a cardinal rule of politics: never give yourself powers you don’t want the other side to have. Meanwhile, new regulations for the week range from telling time during emergencies to electronic olive grower meetings.
On to the data:
Highlights from last week’s new final regulations:
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.
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Posted in regulation, Uncategorized
Plutarch – Parallel Lives
A Roman who wrote in the first century A.D., Plutarch wrote history through biography—an approach many contemporary historians could learn from. His purpose had more to do with moral instruction rather than to tell a chronicle narrative history.
Plutarch tells his biographies mostly in pairs, typically with one Greek and one Roman, with a short comparison afterwards. For example, he compares the Greek rhetorician Demosthenes with the Roman Cicero, Alexander the Great with Julius Caesar, and the mythical Athenian founder Theseus with Romulus.
He writes of each man’s accomplishments, but also tells of their personal lives and their personal character. This makes for livelier reading, and better serves Plutarch’s intended moral purpose. He was also a proficient storyteller, with Shakespeare drawing directly from Plutarch for many of his historical plays.
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Posted in Books, History, Uncategorized
Henri Pirenne – Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe
Though written before Mohammed and Charlemagne, it continues the Pirenne thesis up through the 15th century.
Trade never stopped during the medieval period, but it was geographically confined for political, military, and religious reasons. Eastern goods such as cloths and especially spices all but disappeared from Europe. The ultra-high prices merchants could command for these goods made remaining long-distance trade very lucrative.
When political and cultural change in the Near East eventually let more trade through, it quickly led to the birth of modern finance and banking—though Europe’s own cultural restrictions, such as prohibitions on usury and a popular disdain for commerce, slowed the process.
It also led to both the rise and decline of the Champagne Fairs and similar big annual events. Long distance trade went from almost nothing to enough to support large annual fairs, then finally became commonplace enough to make faraway goods available year-round in every city, making the fairs obsolete. In a weird way, both the rise and the fall of the Champagne fairs were evidence of progress.
Italy, especially Venice, and the North Sea traders from the cities comprising the Hanseatic League were some of the biggest drivers of the economic revival. It is not a coincidence that the Renaissance began around this time.
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Posted in Books, Economics, History, Trade, Uncategorized
Henri Pirenne – Mohammed and Charlemagne
The Pirenne thesis is that barbarian invasions didn’t collapse the Roman Empire in 476 AD—economic isolation did, two centuries later.
Most barbarians wanted to assimilate, not destroy. They eventually became soldiers, senators, and even emperors who gave their lives fighting for the Empire, sometimes against their own former countrymen. Government and everyday life stayed pretty much the same after Romulus Augustus’ 476 overthrow.
The real change happened about two centuries later, when Arabs conquered most of the southern, eastern, and western Mediterranean. The new conquerors were uninterested in trading with the Romans, and mostly ignored them. This isolated the old Empire from existing long-distance trade.
Isolation from trade caused Europe’s economic decline, as the archaeological record shows (later historians have since confirmed this in detail). Papyrus was replaced by costlier parchment, and churches were lit by ineffective wax candles instead of oil-burning lamps. What once was open became isolated, and that’s what caused the Dark Ages.
Highly recommended, and relevant to today’s trade and immigration policy debates.
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Posted in Books, Economics, History, Trade, Uncategorized
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – Oration on the Dignity of Man
This short text is informally called the manifesto of the Italian renaissance. Pico della Mirandola was a brash twenty-something when he wrote this, and more than a little bit of a pedant. But all the hallmarks of renaissance thought are there—human-centered rather than god-centered; engaged with Greek and Roman classics, previously forbidden or forgotten in the Christian world; ditto Arabic and Jewish texts; a flowery, ornate prose style; a belief in progress and perhaps even the perfectibility of man; and a general spirit of can-do audacity.
All of these were breaks with medieval tradition, and an important step on the way to Enlightenment-style modernity.
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Posted in Books, History, Philosophy, Uncategorized
Tim Peake – Ask an Astronaut: My Guide to Life in Space
A book-length Q&A session with an astronaut who spent six months on the International Space Station. The tone is friendly and conversational, and the questions are good—Peake drew from public responses using the Twitter hashtag #askanastronaut.
His answers cover everything from training, liftoff, the various irks and quirks of life on the ISS, from food to using the bathroom, what space smells like, what happens when you sweat inside a spacesuit in zero-gravity, and the scary thrill of reentry. I can see this book appealing to younger space enthusiasts, too.
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Posted in Books, Innovation, Science, Technology, Uncategorized
Richard Overton – An Arrow against All Tyrants
In this short 1646 pamphlet, Overton favors civil disobedience, the higher rule of law and principle over faulty man-made legislation, the separation of powers, and religious freedom. All this at a time when an absolute monarch, Charles I, held the throne. And he wrote it from prison. Overton had guts, give him that. The parallels with today’s political debates and the competing principles behind them is startling.
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Posted in Books, History, Philosophy, Political Animals, Uncategorized
The delayed State of the Union speech happened on Tuesday, but contained no surprises on the policy front. The length of the Federal Register doubled this week, as did the number of final regulations and agency notices, an unusual occurrence for February. The number of new final regulations on the year also hit the 100 mark on Thursday and exceeded it on Friday, with new rules for the week ranging from arts penalties to “civil disturbance intervention.”
On to the data:
All of last week’s new final regulations:
For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.
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Posted in regulation, Uncategorized
Inertia Wins! 