As with sex and money — and most of the important matters in life — many silly things are said about power. Perhaps the granddaddy of those silly things is the oft-quoted phrase, Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is an important truth that Lord Acton’s phrase tries to capture. But taken literally […]
You’ve heard the claim: “Deregulation caused the crisis.” In the years leading up to 2008, the story goes, bad economists convinced bad politicians to deregulate the money/banking/finance sector of the economy, and bad capitalists then enjoyed an orgy of greed that caused the system to go haywire. Nobel-Prize-winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have signed
Blamestorming and “Deregulation caused the financial crisis” [Good Life series] Read More »
Martín Krause is Professor of Economics and the University of Buenos Aires and a specialist in law and economics and institutional economics. With Professor Krause’s permission, here is the 2015 edition of “INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY 2015” [pdf], which ranks 193 countries in three categories: Institutional Quality, Political Institutions, Market Institutions. For those interested in the performance
Martín Krause’s index of economic and political institutional quality Read More »
CEE’s Entrepreneurship and Values series includes seven 15-20-minute lectures on foundational issues in entrepreneurship. 1. What Is Entrepreneurship? 2. Unleash Your Inner Company 3. Management and Entrepreneurship 4. What Makes Entrepreneurs Tick? 5. Entrepreneurship and Virtue Ethics 6. Entrepreneurship and Liberty 7. Entrepreneurship and Public Policy The lecturers are all entrepreneurs or university professors —
Entrepreneurship and Values — seven short lectures Read More »
Another election looms, and the question on everyone’s mind is: Will the big donors get their money’s worth? Cynicism about money in politics is a healthy response to our long history of cronyism. When $700 billion in bailout funds were distributed during the 2008 crisis, politically-connected financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs received the lion’s
Does Money Buy Elections? When Billionaires Court Voters [Good Life series] Read More »
How does one evaluate the significance of a time when (a) millions of voters seem drunkenly elated about a candidate, and (b) all of that society’s wise pundits dismissed the candidate’s possible success? History helps by sending oracles about eras when those two phenomena were jointly in play. * On the early 1930s in Germany,
Predicting political tipping points is hard Read More »
First, some good news about the 1970s Love Canal environmental disaster in New York: long-term studies have shown no increase in rates of cancer or birth defects among the area’s residents. That’s welcome news, even though toxic chemicals were released into the environment, homeowners were frightened, dislocated, and suffered large losses of property value. Now
The Love Canal Environmental Disaster — Four Decades Later [Good Life series] Read More »
Chances are good that someone you know owns a Che t-shirt. Romanticized versions of Ernesto Guevara Lynch’s bearded face are popular on campuses and elsewhere — so popular that the American chain store Urban Outfitters planned to release a whole line of Che-inspired fashion items, and dozens of other websites offer a wide range of
Our Che Guevara Problem [The Good Life] Read More »