Volume 7, No. 2 (Summer 2004)
Perhaps the best concise summary of this book is given by editor Alexander Tabarrok in his concluding chapter. As he points out, where most urbanists see market failures, the authors of The Voluntary City see market opportunities. Needless to say, such a perspective will come as a shock to theorists and practitioners whose raison d’être is built around notions such as public goods and externalities.
While The Voluntary City is mostly an attempt to provide a stepping stone to illustrate how services that are currently provided by politicized bureaucracies could be better delivered through market-based arrangements, the editors have had the good sense to frame their discussion not so much in terms of market versus public planning, but rather along the lines of civil society (which includes not only market processes, but also nonprofit firms and other not-for-profit organizations) versus bureaucratic-political procedures. (But while this may be a good rhetorical strategy, I suspect that in its present-day incarnation, the nonprofit sector has essentially become nothing more than a grab bag of cheap-labor extensions and lobby groups of government agencies and that casting too much hope in it might prove disappointing. Yet, reminding readers of what it once was and might again be is a useful task.
So-called climate change is really an excuse for government to do what it does worst: intervene in our economic affairs. While government efforts will not cool the planet, they will make life more difficult for the planet’s inhabitants.
Original Article: Climate Deniers Deny Socialism. That's Why the Regime Hates Them.
World elites gathered in yet another attempt to remake the world in a different image, with so-called climate change invoked as the catalyst for the meeting. As one can imagine, their "good" society is not very good for those who are not elites.
Original Article: COP28: Climate Catastrophism Wins as the World Loses
In this week's episode Mark explains the term "Greenwashing" and describes how Austrian economists might agree with the sentiment behind it. Are Austrian school economists against the environment? Mark thinks not and explains why.
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Mainstream economists turned climate warriors use cost-of-production methods to determine the “true” social cost of carbon. They appeal to a discredited methodology falsely attributed to medieval Scholastics.
Original Article: The Worse-than-Medieval Economics of Climate Technocrats
The eternal “climate emergency” is upon us. While doomsday is said to be around the corner, the reality is that the only thing rising is the level of government control.
Original Article: The "Climate Emergency": Fueled by 21st Century Marxism
Residential electricity sources are becoming yet another form of “virtue signaling.”
Original Article: Can Electricity Providers Promise 100 Percent Green Energy? Probably Not.
Climate alarmism dominates the news cycle, but perhaps people be more alarmed by massive federal budget deficits and runaway entitlement spending.
Original Article: It’s Time for Some Debt and Entitlement Alarmism
Progressives have distinguished themselves in the past half century by being against progress. That trend is unlikely to change.
Original Article: "Real Progress versus the Progressives"
Leonard Read's famous "I, Pencil" explained the workings of the market in terms of the creation of a simple pencil. However, we should not forget that the reviled fossil fuels are involved at every turn.
Original Article: "Not Even a Pencil Could Exist without Fossil Fuels"
Mainstream economists are quick to claim that environmental problems are caused by "market failure" that can be "fixed" by government intervention. However, the intervention itself is the problem.
Original Article: "Why Government Pollution Control Fails"
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