Had some very nice dinner, and then a brief (by London standards; it was three hours, which was enough for jet-lagged MM) pub crawl with the Skarbeki and two lads from ASI.
And played "Seinfeld episode," because the two ASI-ers reminded me so much of George and Kramer. Let's call them "Sam" (the George K clone) and "Ben" (the Kramer clone). Because those are their names. They were kind enough to act out parts of the dialogue. I wish we had had a camera. Natural vaudevillians, Sam and Ben.
Here are the proposed Seinfeld episodes that I remember (and, yes, several of these apparently actually happened to Sam and Ben, in different ways):
1. George has a date with an Asian woman he doesn't really want to go out with. To get rid of her, he takes her to a very Americanized "Chinese" restaurant and then orders sweet and sour pork. She says things in Chinese that are impolite, but the waiter agrees with her and kicks George out.
2. Kramer decides that he is going to estimate a DSGE model for policy simulations for the New York area. The gang is skeptical, with George whining about the Lucas critique. But Kramer is insistent: "Jerry...it's DYNAMIC! And NONLINEAR!"
3. George decides to buy a new cell phone, but drives everyone crazy by dithering over the decision. Eventually he decides to test five of them at the same time. But he keeps running out of battery, and has to plug them in everywhere he goes. Eventually, he wears a utility belt with five large back-up chargers strapped to it, and then tries to go through airport security....
4. Jerry becomes obsessed with the Elgin Marbles, claiming they should be returned to Greece. George and Elaine are scornful, saying that England should keep them, because otherwise they would have been lost or destroyed, and it's "only right." Everybody is doing research on the internet, and then saying "Did you know...?" about some obscure fact. Kramer goes around driving everyone crazy, peeking in doorways and shouting, "Greece has lost its marbles!" and then closing the door again.
5. Jerry works on a routine that is based on telling jokes. But Kramer has heard them all, and he can't help but shout out the punchline. Jerry tries to hide, but Kramer can't help himself and keeps finding him. Worst of all, Kramer always follows up the punchline shouting by guffawing, "HA! Premature e-joke-ulation!" Kramer never tires of this joke, but everyone else does.
How are we to judge whether something is a church?
For example....is this a church? I expect most people would say "no," but the discretion to classify as a church, or not, is a pretty significant power for the state to have.
Mrs. Angus recently went to Pepperdine to talk about her book, "The Long Process of Development".
They just dropped a video of the talk on youtube.
Here are some of the titles I suggested for the book:
"The long and winding road"
"Time time time is on our side"
"Its just a matter of time"
Here is my one sentence synopsis of the book's main message:
"It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken".
What she shows in the book is that, while it's true that England adopted vastly superior economic policies in its North Atlantic colonies than did Spain, it was the relative strength and sophistication of the English state compared to the Spanish that allowed England to do what it did. The argument refutes the common view that Spain was strong and centralized, and the strength of the state led directly to its crappy colonial policies.
Just like I said, right?
Here's the Amazon page for the book. If the price tag is a deal breaker for you, remember that the paperback will be out May 1 at a considerable savings.
People, how can the Kindle edition be $60???? Have you ever heard of such a thing? My own dear wife is a price-gouger!
William Nordhaus American Economic Review April 2015, Pages 1339-1370
Abstract:
Notwithstanding great progress in scientific and economic understanding of climate change, it has proven difficult to forge international agreements because of free-riding, as seen in the defunct Kyoto Protocol. This study examines the club as a model for international climate policy. Based on economic theory and empirical modeling, it finds that without sanctions against non-participants there are no stable coalitions other than those with minimal abatement. By contrast, a regime with small trade penalties on non-participants, a Climate Club, can induce a large stable coalition with high levels of abatement.
This morning had a great time watching Pete Boettke wander around at APEE, complaining that all the breakfast (advertised on the program as "continental breakfast", btw) foods were breads and sugar. He wanted "protein."
If ONLY there were a system where one could go to some establishment, order exactly what one wanted, and then exchange some valuable tokens for that meal. We could call it... markets. And restaurants (there are at least six full service restaurants in this hotel complex...)
But I have to admit that I was with Pete. Wouldn't it be great if there were just free food, as much as I want, and it had bacon and eggs (the Angus special) and cheese and ham and steak and.... Wouldn't that be great?
It's so tempting to want that, and to want someone else to provide it. The difference is that Pete was actually just joking and having a good time. Many people really think there "should" be free stuff for everyone. But when they/we try to provide free stuff for everyone, you get people standing in long lines for stuff like toilet paper. Forget protein...we're talking about toilet paper. That's not right. Markets are the best we can do, and they are actually pretty good.
