Monthly Archives: January 2016

China Fact of the Day

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Arnold Kling

George Friedman writes, most Chinese wealth is concentrated 200 miles from the coast. The next 500–1,000 miles west is a land of Han Chinese living in Third World poverty. The China that most Westerners think about is the thin strip … Continue reading →

Posted in International issues | 2 Comments

My Review of Scott Sumner’s The Midas Paradox

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Arnold Kling

The book offers a historical interpretation of the Great Depression as a monetary phenomenon. My review is here. This paragraph may be a bit terse: The price index that Sumner uses is the Wholesale Price Index. This is a volatile … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, Economic History | 3 Comments

Meet the Totalitarians

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Arnold Kling

Jonathan Haidt writes, Like most of the questions, it was backed up by a sea of finger snaps — the sort you can hear in the infamous Yale video, where a student screams at Prof. Christakis to “be quiet” and … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, Libertarian Thought | 22 Comments

Douglass North vs. Anarcho-capitalism

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Arnold Kling

In Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, he wrote (p. 58), players may devise an institutional framework to improve measurement and enforcement and therefore make possible exchange, but the resultant transaction costs raise the costs of exchange. . .The more … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, Libertarian Thought | 19 Comments

Debate is not about Debate

Posted on January 2, 2016 by Arnold Kling

Robin Hanson writes, in our intellectual world, usually there just is no “debate”; there are just different sides who separately market their points of view. Just as in ordinary marketing, where firms usually pitch their products without mentioning competing products, … Continue reading →

Posted in Economic education and methods | 8 Comments

Virginia Postrel on Martin Gurri

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Arnold Kling

She writes, As information becomes abundant, he writes, “the regime accumulates pain points.” By this he means that problems like police brutality, economic mismanagement, foreign policy failures and botched responses to disasters “can no longer be concealed or explained away.” … Continue reading →

Posted in books and book reviews, Internet governance and political theory | 8 Comments