Econlib Newsletter
 January 2022

Dear friends,

We made it! Despite a year of many fears and uncertainties, we are glad to have reached another year to explore economics for every life with YOU. We grew our community again in 2021, kept putting out the best economics content on the web, and launched a NEW program- our No Due Date book club, curated by our good friend Pete Boettke. 

If you've made a New Year's Resolution to learn more economics, perhaps you can let EconLog's Pierre Lemieux give you some advice. (Pierre also penned our newest Liberty Classic; see below.) If your new year's plans involve finding ways to ramp up your creativity, don't miss this week's new EconTalk podcast with Lorne Buchman, who makes the case for embracing uncertainty to excel in creativity, leadership, and life. Maybe you have resolved to read more classics this year. In that case, you can explore some great literary suggestions AND mount a case that economics is not all about greed with Richard Gunderman's new Feature Article.

Finally, as it seems we're not out of the pandemic yet, may we suggest revisiting this May 2020 EconTalk episode with Nobel laureate Paul Romer. Romer was a major and early advocate of making testing routine for COVID. He proposed a model where it would be routine, easy, commonplace--and free-market-- compared to the new crisis plan of providing millions of free testing kits and requiring insurers to pay for these kits.

And if you don't find what you're looking for here, we hope you'll let us know what it is! We're always available at [email protected] and on Facebook and twitter.

Until next month, stay well, and stay curious.

 
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NEW Econlib Articles: January 2022
The Beef with Greed: Leo Tolstoy and Adam Smith
By Richard Gunderman
 
In this month's Feature Article, Richard Gunderman begins, "Free market economics and libertarianism are often linked, rightly wrongly, with egoism, selfishness, and greed. To really understand greed, Gunderman argues we must dig deeper, and this he does, bringing Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith, and many more to the conversation. Read More.
The State is Us, But Beware!
By Pierre Lemieux

In the newest Liberty Classic, we commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Buchanan and Tullock's classic public choice text, The Calculus of Consent. Lemieux finds much to be admired in this work, and finds new elements to appreciate today. For example, “An equal moral value is attached to the utility of all individuals. The individualism of The Calculus of Consent is not only methodological, but also ethical.” Read More.
Jonathan Rauch and the Knowledge Problem
By Arnold Kling

Where does new knowledge come from? In this month's review, Arnold Kling finds much to laud about Jonathan Rauch's depiction of knowledge's emergence, yet he still finds something missing. Says Kling, "Where Rauch focuses on the attacks on twentieth-century information order from without, I would emphasize the rot from within."  Read More.
The War That Never Ends
By Nathan Goodman
 
In this new Review, Nathan Goodman writes, "The war on terror has been going on for most of my life. Many college students today have been living with the war on terror for their entire lives." How did this come to be? Goodman explores the classic public choice explanation offered by Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall in their newest book.  Read More.
 
2021's Most-Read Articles
What were you thinking?

We're happy to report (kinda, sorta, maybe?) that COVID was not your top concern in 2021. At least not in terms of the Econlib Articles you were most interested in this past year. Modern Monetary Theory, on the other hand, was definitely on your mind. Here's what the numbers told us you read the most in 2021:

More Read Articles of 2021:
  1. Scott Sumner, Understanding Modern Monetary Theory: Part 1
  2. Scott Sumner, Understanding Modern Monetary Theory: Part 2
  3. Nicolas Cachanosky, Modern Monetary Theory: Nothing New Under the Sun
  4. Trey Malone and Jayson Lusk, No Yolk: Shortage and Spikes in the Time of COVID 
  5. Caleb Fuller, 150 Years of the Austrian School of Economics
Arnold Kling's book reviews continued to tempt you, as they secure ALL the next top spots for 2021. Check out Arnold's archive here.

And here are a few of our all-time classic Articles, which you still showed a lot of love for this past year:
EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious
Michael Munger on Constitutions

If you jaywalk, we’ll all jaywalk, it will be anarchy! Join Duke University economist, political scientist, and reformed jaywalker Michael Munger for a discussion about rules with a capital “c”: Constitutions. Listen as he tells Russ why he thinks we follow them, why we shouldn’t be so quick to change them, and why we societies need rules about the rules if we’re to have any hope of politics. Explore more.

More Recent Episodes:
 
There's still time to join our NEW subscription book club and with Pete Boettke!

Enjoy the best of economics and the social sciences with a community of readers, and get exclusive access to subscriber-only online events. Subscribe today, and receive January's selection right away!
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