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Politicians' 'Principles' (by Don Boudreaux)<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/05/politicians-principles.html> Posted: 15 May 2009 05:52 PM PDT I wrote the following lines in a private letter to friends back in December when George W. Bush, then still president of the executive branch of the U.S. national government, announced that he was abandoning his free-market principles<http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081216215816.8g97981o&show_article=1>. The truth of these lines, however, transcends time and political party. The man who never cheats on his wife because no other woman will have him is not particularly principled - but he proudly fancies himself that way. So the first bimbo he sniffs who'll do him the honor will prompt him to "abandon his principles" with as much alacrity as a hungry dog will attack a ham. Such are the principles of our "leaders." (P.S. One cannot abandon what one never possessed.) <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=17UXf1XFwv8:4mFEAYrDFWQ:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=17UXf1XFwv8:4mFEAYrDFWQ:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=17UXf1XFwv8:4mFEAYrDFWQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=17UXf1XFwv8:4mFEAYrDFWQ:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=17UXf1XFwv8:4mFEAYrDFWQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ> Twittering (by Russell Roberts)<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/05/twittering.html> Posted: 15 May 2009 03:00 PM PDT I'm twittering as EconTalker. I'll twitter from time to time on EconTalk developments, Cafe Hayek developments, Adam Smith and whatever else I can express tersely. An experiment. <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=qsIzvcODAAM:fOKSg8MtmFU:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=qsIzvcODAAM:fOKSg8MtmFU:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=qsIzvcODAAM:fOKSg8MtmFU:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=qsIzvcODAAM:fOKSg8MtmFU:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=qsIzvcODAAM:fOKSg8MtmFU:gIN9vFwOqvQ> Sudden disruption (by Russell Roberts)<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/05/sudden-disruption.html> Posted: 15 May 2009 02:13 PM PDT Here is Adam Smith speculating in The Wealth of Nations<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN13.html#IV.2.42>on the dynamic nature of the British labor market if all tariffs and barriers to imports were removed. Surely, there would be mass unemployment and catastrophic disruption. Not so, says Smith. And he uses a very elegan natural experiment to make his case: Secondly, though a great number of people should, by thus restoring the freedom of trade, be thrown all at once out of their ordinary employment and common method of subsistence, it would by no means follow that they would thereby be deprived either of employment or subsistence. By the reduction of the army and navy at the end of the late war, more than a hundred thousand soldiers and seamen, a number equal to what is employed in the greatest manufactures, were all at once thrown out of their ordinary employment; but, though they no doubt suffered some inconveniency, they were not thereby deprived of all employment and subsistence. The greater part of the seamen, it is probable, gradually betook themselves to the merchant-service as they could find occasion, and in the meantime both they and the soldiers were absorbed in the great mass of the people, and employed in a great variety of occupations. Not only no great convulsion, but no sensible disorder arose from so great a change in the situation of more than a hundred thousand men, all accustomed to the use of arms, and many of them to rapine and plunder. The number of vagrants was scarce any-where sensibly increased by it, even the wages of labour were not reduced by it in any occupation, so far as I have been able to learn, except in that of seamen in the merchant-service. But if we compare together the habits of a soldier and of any sort of manufacturer, we shall find that those of the latter do not tend so much to disqualify him from being employed in a new trade, as those of the former from being employed in any. The manufacturer has always been accustomed to look for his subsistence from his labour only: the soldier to expect it from his pay. Application and industry have been familiar to the one; idleness and dissipation to the other. But it is surely much easier to change the direction of industry from one sort of labour to another than to turn idleness and dissipation to any. To the greater part of manufactures besides, it has already been observed,*62<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN13.html#f62>there are other collateral manufactures of so similar a nature that a workman can easily transfer his industry from one of them to another. <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ntYWoJNh6XM:GaXyEV0Pt0I:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ntYWoJNh6XM:GaXyEV0Pt0I:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ntYWoJNh6XM:GaXyEV0Pt0I:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ntYWoJNh6XM:GaXyEV0Pt0I:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ntYWoJNh6XM:GaXyEV0Pt0I:gIN9vFwOqvQ> Following the money (by Russell Roberts)<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/05/following-the-money.html> Posted: 15 May 2009 02:10 PM PDT Here are two totally intuitive common sense arguments: "Buying local is better than buying from a chain store—the money stays in the community." "New products only benefit the inventor—the money he receives necessarily reduces the money available to other producers." Both are intuitive and common-sense. Both are wrong. Both illustrate an additional fallacy—that economics is "just common sense." The fallacy in the two statements is the equating of money with prosperity. They are not the same. What we care about isn't the number of green pieces of paper with pictures of dead statesmen on them. It's what the pieces of paper buy. The fallacy is to see voluntary exchange as necessarily zero-sum. It is not. It is positive-sum. Understanding this is perhaps the single most important and basic lesson of economics. It is also one of the hardest to learn. <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=XIlF2HxVBzE:BpJ1q2hDr8U:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=XIlF2HxVBzE:BpJ1q2hDr8U:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=XIlF2HxVBzE:BpJ1q2hDr8U:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=XIlF2HxVBzE:BpJ1q2hDr8U:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=XIlF2HxVBzE:BpJ1q2hDr8U:gIN9vFwOqvQ> Adam Smith on the President and the government running GM (by Russell Roberts)<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/05/adam-smith-on-running-the-government-running-gm.html> Posted: 15 May 2009 11:57 AM PDT >From The Wealth of Nations<http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN13.html> : What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it. <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=jir5nttGWJg:OKMrjUy7x9s:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=jir5nttGWJg:OKMrjUy7x9s:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=jir5nttGWJg:OKMrjUy7x9s:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=jir5nttGWJg:OKMrjUy7x9s:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=jir5nttGWJg:OKMrjUy7x9s:gIN9vFwOqvQ> You are subscribed to email updates from Cafe Hayek<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/> To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now<http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailunsubscribe?k=RD87GWo2xMyNcdDv2g6ct6FC7Lk> .Email delivery powered by Google Inbox too full? 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