Blog

“Hocus Pocus Charles Kochus” Is Not An Argument

Inside Higher Ed runs an article on the Koch conspiracy narrative from defenders of Democracy in Chains. So far, there are no attempts to engage with critics who have pointed to the book’s crippling flaws of interpretation and analysis. It’s just repetitions of the “hocus pocus Charles Kochus” spell from the little-known forthcoming volume of […]

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Recent Reads

“Recent” as in “I read these in early March.” Tyler Cowen, The Complacent Class. This is a depressing volume from a self-described optimist. It’s a useful exploration of trends in productivity given that it’s easy to focus on the sector that is most dynamic (information technology). Elsewhere, Cowen has discussed other sectors—government, schooling—where productivity is […]

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The Plague of Contented Mediocrity

In February 2015, Leroy Butler gave a speech at Samford University on “Diversity in Missions.” It raises unique challenges at a University that was only integrated in the late 1960s and that is still overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly affluent. I wasn’t surprised but I was frustrated to see that from my vantage point, it seemed […]

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The Role of High Gas Prices

Price “gouging” is not a moral issue. It’s an economic issue with *beneficial* humanitarian consequences. Counterintuitive as it may seem, high gas prices from natural disasters send two very powerful signals into the market: they tell gas producers to produce more, and they tell gas consumers to consume less. After disasters, the news wires fill […]

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A Drug War Peace Dividend?

Should we bring back “Just Say No” and ramp up the drug war, especially as more states decriminalize recreational marijuana use? As I have written before, drug prohibition is (literally) “a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended consequences” most visible in the extensive criminal underground and widespread violence associated with prohibition. What can […]

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My Favorite Economics Education Resources

Here’s a list of some of my favorite Econ Ed resources: MRUniversity. I teach from Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s Modern Principles textbook. This site features loads of videos and mini-courses that can be adapted to any econ course. LearnLiberty. I’ve made a lot of videos for LearnLiberty, which is an online project of the Institute […]

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My Favorite MLK Quote

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job […]

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