That State Ain't Gone Crazy. That State Gone STATE.

An essay in which I try to adapt the Chris Rock insight about the nature of things, or, if you will, "The Thing Itself."

AIER LINK.

And link to the Chris Rock bit, if you haven't seen it.

Bartleby the Economist!

Our universally acclaimed  Governor has promulgated a budget clawback executive order, which was passed on to us individual OU faculty without any guidance about which parts, if any, apply to us.

What applies is an open question because State appropriations only provide 15-20% of OU's budget, thus limiting what can be clawed back.

The parts that have attracted faculty attention are these bits:

So the question is, do I have to notify the State in writing when I renew my Econometric Society membership?

Or, if another school or organization pays my expenses to come and give a seminar (which I have coming up at least 3 times next semester) do I have to inform the State and get permission from the Governor?

I'm not sure who to blame most, Fallin for the unparseable XO, or the OU administration for just forwarding it to us with no interpretation or guidance.

However, in this matter, as in most other such cases I have encountered along my life's journey, I will practice my usual passive civil disobedience.

Bartleby the Economist!

Mere Liberty

C.S. Lewis is a very interesting thinker.

Here's a lecture by David Theroux of Independent Institute on "C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism."

It's pretty long, but you can download it as an MP3 and listen to it as a podcast.

Pro-Government Libertarians?

I'm not sure "Pro-government libertarian" is a sensible concept.

But I do like the idea of "Pro-liberty libertarian."

And there are some circumstances--we'd have to argue about which--where the existence of a state can enhance liberty. 

I'm not really a fan of either (1) the state is never right, or (2) the state is always right.  Both are religious observations, rather than policy prescriptions.

Someone Else's Money on A Service for Someone Else

Milton Friedman famously noted that we should think about care in spending cash as a two-by-two box (all important theories are two-by-two boxes, in fact, so why would this be different?)

Here is my version of Uncle Milty's theory:

So, if you spend your money on yourself, you will spend what you think it is worth, but check to see if you get high quality.

If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you don't care much about price, but you will check to make sure the quality is good.

If you spend your money on someone else (not a family member, someone you don't know and will never meet, call them a "welfare recipient") you will underpay and care little about quality, so the service will be terrible.

Finally, if you spend someone else's money on a service for someone else, you will pay more than $700 million in unauthorized overtime for crappy, abusive service.

EVERYTHING the state does, by definition, is spending someone else's money on a service for someone you don't care about. What could possibly go wrong with THAT brilliant scheme?

Blogoverse needs Pritchett

Lant Pritchett is guestblogging up a storm about conditional cash transfers.

Check out these two excellent (albeit perhaps slightly contradictory) posts here and here.

Self-recommending.