My Weekly Reading and Viewing for February 18, 2024 – Econlib

By Eric Boehm, Motive, February 16, 2024

Excerpt:

If there may be the thinnest little bit of a silver lining to be discovered within the premature demise of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition chief who reportedly died this week in jail, maybe it’s this: It’s a well-timed reminder of how a lot Russia sucks.

Most People in all probability don’t want the reminder. In spite of everything, Russia has been an authoritarian state for so long as any American alive immediately can bear in mind, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s report of murdering political opponents, imprisoning critics, and silencing dissent is nicely established. Additionally, there’s that silly, harmful conflict in Ukraine.

This week, nonetheless, the web has been handled to the absurd spectacle of former Fox Information pundit Tucker Carlson’s weird propaganda tour of Moscow (on the heels of his extra defensible choice to interview Putin). By way of movies posted to X, previously Twitter, Carlson raved about the great thing about the Moscow subway system and was wowed by the gorgeous expertise of…buying carts? By means of all of it, Carlson has repeatedly steered that possibly Russia isn’t such unhealthy a spot, as if an absence of subway graffiti have been a very powerful metric for measuring the standard of a rustic.

My remark: It’s too unhealthy that Tucker didn’t appear to have seen any Greenback shops in Moscow. Certainly then, he would have seen by his personal hype.

1968 Robert F. Kennedy Marketing campaign Advert

Ignorant U.S. Senator Scares the Bejesus out of Younger Kids

by Ben Christopher, Cal Issues, February 7, 2024. (HT2 co-blogger Scott Sumner)

Excerpt:

One other key element: In contrast to most up-to-date statewide legal guidelines geared toward rushing up the approval of recent housing, the Los Angeles legislation doesn’t require builders to pay building employees heightened “prevailing wages” — roughly equal to what unionized building employees earn on a public infrastructure initiatives. Muhammad Alameldin, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Terner Heart for Housing Innovation, stated that makes Government Directive 1 a sort of alternate actuality for housing coverage in California.

Then comes the following step. Most so-called “ED1 initiatives” additionally make use of a hodgepodge of statewide “density bonus” legal guidelines that permit builders of 100% reasonably priced housing initiatives to pack way more models and flooring onto a given lot than would in any other case be allowed below native zoning guidelines. These legal guidelines additionally let reasonably priced builders decide and select from a variety of goodies and freebies that reduce prices additional and permit for but denser growth. Meaning no parking spots, restricted open area, smaller rooms and fewer bushes.

All these added models imply builders can set the rents decrease and nonetheless pay themselves again for the price of building after which some.

Remark: By “No Public Price” within the title, the writer means not “no value to the general public,” however “no value to taxpayers.” The individuals who purchase them will nonetheless pay a reasonably penny, nevertheless it’s value it to them.

by David Friedman, David Friedman’s Substack, February 13, 2024

Excerpt:

One downside with Huemer’s argument is that the experience of the skilled hardly ever covers sufficient of the difficulty to derive a conclusion on the idea of his personal data. A climatologist is aware of extra about local weather than I accomplish that the skilled consensus on what’s going to occur to international temperature, assuming I can work out what it’s, is a greater guess than I can produce for myself. However the climatologist has no experience in economics, which is likely one of the issues wanted to work out the results of that change — and I do. He in all probability has little experience in statistics; I’m higher off determining for myself, with the help of data from statisticians,  whether or not to consider Michael Mann’s hockey stick diagram. His experience in climatology tells him nothing concerning the impact of CO2 focus on crop yields, a query it might not have occurred to him to consider. His conclusions concerning the penalties of local weather change rely upon various issues he’s not an skilled in. As soon as I’ve accepted his prediction of future local weather I’ve no motive to offer particular weight to his conclusions about its impact on human welfare or the price of lowering CO2 manufacturing, each of which the coverage conclusions that individuals argue about rely upon, so there may be little motive to favor his conclusions to mine.

That’s one instance that I occurred to have checked out in appreciable element. The identical could be true of gun management, the place one of many foremost controversies (over hid carry) was set off by an article by two economists providing proof for an financial level I had made, years earlier than, in my Worth Principle. For the abortion controversy the problems are spiritual and ethical questions on which, as greatest I can inform, there aren’t any specialists, at greatest folks whose writing helps the reader assume by the difficulty for himself.