Ideas Matter

Think Tanks, Video and Experimentation

State Policy Network has just come out with their second in a video series on the Constitution and its erosion. The production values in this piece are pretty darn good. Indeed, this piece is much better than most of what think tanks turn out. If I had any critique, it would be that the talking heads disrupt the flow of a pretty good narrative. In any case, the view count of this piece suggests it's not getting the eyeballs it deserves. 

Licensing: Hurdles for Entrepreneurs, A Leg-up for Cronies

Most people just assume that occupational licensing protects consumers. The truth is, most licensing is a veneer. But it's really designed to create barriers to entry. What's clever about IJ's comparative analysis is that it holds up states with licensing to states without. If you can't find any trouble in the states without them, it's probably not doing any good for the states that have them. In those states, it's probably time to scrap them. But wouldn't that anger cronies?

Equality of Outcome or Opportunity?

The starting line/finish line metaphor is not perfect, but no metaphor is. It does show Friedman's gift for synthesizing big concepts. Precious few people in the liberty movement know how to use the kinds of crystallizing metaphors Milton Friedman did. So the next time you hear someone talk about income inequality, remember the finish line analogy. It helps us unpack the idea that, instead of fretting about who has what, we can ask ourselves how we can better help any given person find the opportunity to be upwardly mobile and to find happiness.

But is it "equality of opportunity" what we're looking for (if we're not looking for equality of outcome)?

Keynes's Magic Dipping Ladel

John Maynard Keynes probably didn't mean to supply justification for any road to serfdom. But he did. We're left with a mythology of job creation that only creates phantom jobs -- namely visible jobs contrived from the largess (but corresponding invisible job losses somewhere else). This is what happens when you divert resources from productive uses to less productive uses -- all in the name of "stimulating" the economy.

Matt Ridley Dishes Up Rational Optimism

Are we going to run out of food, resources and green space? Does trade make one party worse off? Is inequality the root of the world's problems? Is the world going to overheat and cause catastrophe?

Matt Ridley answers these questions and more in the best writing on the relationship between resources, markets and well-being since Julian Simon. What's superb about Ridley's work is that he not only slays the doommongers with flair, but he explains the beautiful processes set in motion by people serving each other creatively.

So why are people so pessimistic?

Educating the World's Poorest -- Privately?

Turns out that when it comes to education, the slumdogs are the millionaires. This TEDx Glasgow talk will reward you for the time spent. And Pauline Dixon has done a great job communicating a research program undertaken with James Tooley whose work you may have heard of watching Free To Choose Network's The Ultimate Resource.

Caine's Arcade: Beautiful, Bottom-up Community and Entrepreneurship

If you aren't moved by this video, check your pulse. This is the stuff community is made of. That we're living in an age in which millions of us can appreciate it? Well, it's just staggering.

But what I want to point out about this beautiful piece -- and the people who came together to make it -- is that it's completely bottom up. That is the nature of community and of entrepreneurship--especially in the 21st century.

Inspired Individualized Education in ... Israel

Since having a child -- and since my wife decided to start her own school -- I can't help but be fascinated by education. In fact, I'm always scanning for interesting educational models that you won't find in the government schools, which -- as you know -- enjoy a virtual monopoly that forces people like my wife to compete with "free." The above comes all the way from Israel. 

Shilling for NASA

Why must "dreaming" about science and space mean a government monopoly?

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a great guy and a great persona. Heck, he could be the next Carl Sagan. But I don't understand why he argues that NASA is a dreammaker -- i.e. why failure to fund NASA more than it's being funded somehow represents the drying up of dreams. I mean seriously: is he suggesting that Newt Gingrich is correct that we should be aiming for Mars with the same body that gives us the postal service, the Afghan War and Solyndra? Allow me another minute or so to slice up Tyson's shilling for NASA.

Perspective on Poverty

The John Locke Foundation's Fergus Hodgson offers perspective on poverty. Some people may be politically offended by how much the rich have in the U.S. But in great swaths of the world, people would go to extraordinary lengths to be in the bottom quartile of earners in developed countries. And they do.