How to Stay Smart in a Smart World 🌏

Econlib Newsletter
August 2022

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
– Henry James

We hope you have enjoyed a glorious summer! For some of us, "the most wonderful time of the year" is almost upon us...a new academic year! We've got a lot of new opportunities coming your way...we'll start unveiling them next month. In the meantime, this month we have another new Liberty Classic, new book reviews, a new podcast, and more. Some other highlights from the past month include:

Scott Sumner, Raise Taxes on Investment? Some questions on the Inflation Reduction Act
Richard Fulmer, Socialists' Claims About Capitalism... A three-part myth-busting series.
Nathan Goodman, Star Wars and the Rebel's Dilemma. Why was Luke Skywalker initially so reluctant to join the Rebellion against the Empire?
Pierre Lemieux, Child Care: Massive Benefit for "the Economy?" Most good things have costs, that is, constraints.
OLL September Virtual Reading Group: Liberty and Virtue in the Axial Age (with readings from the Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates)

Until next month, stay well, and stay curious.

Forward

NEW Econlib Articles: August 2022

California Leaking:
People, Pipes, and Prices
By Richard B. McKenzie and John McKenzie

California (and much of the West) is in the midst of its worst multi-decade drought in maybe a millennium. The central policy challenge is not whether Californians will reduce their water use for the rest of the year to bring demand in line with the constricted rainfall, but how they will do so—whether by appeals for voluntary conservation, by government fiats to force conservation, or by higher prices to induce less water consumption.

Higher water prices can increase the state’s available water supply—without additional rainfall or the construction of desalination plants.
Read More.

Ludwig von Mises' Socialism: A Proper Defense of Liberalism
By Rosolino Candela

"The Marxian prescription, or at least its economic ingredient, may be in disrepute, but Marx continues to control the social from his grave in Highgate” (1992, pp. 3-4). Thus, we “need now understand voluntary social process as completely as we understand market process, and libertarians could again show the way” (1992, p. 7), and it is Mises, who “knew that economics is the beginning of the inquiry into the nature and metabolism of human action and certainly not the end of it.” Read More.

Volksgemeinschaft: Hitler as Revolutionary
By Stephen Davies

Zitelmann’s book sets out clearly an important, even central aspect of Hitler’s career and the nature of what he represented that has been largely ignored or misunderstood, sometimes deliberately. In doing this it helps us reach a much clearer understanding of not only Hitler himself and the vision that drove him and which he sought to realise but also the nature of Nazism and its project. As such, it is of much wider and continuing relevance than one might suppose. Read More.

Balaji-land: Getting From Here to There
By Arnold Kling

Suppose that my house is located in Silver Spring, Maryland, in the United States, and I wish to join Balaji-land. How do I get out of paying taxes to my county, state, and the U.S. Treasury? Which regulations of my local jurisdiction am I able to jettison? Read More.

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

The Library of Economics and Liberty carries the popular Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (CEE), edited by David R. Henderson (also of EconLog).

This highly acclaimed economics encyclopedia was first published in 1993 under the title The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. It features easy-to-read articles by over 150 top economists, including Nobel Prize winners, over 80 biographies of famous economists, and many tables and charts illustrating economics in action. With David R. Henderson’s permission and encouragement, the Econlib edition of this work includes links, additions, corrections, and entries available only online.

We've recently made some updates to the CEE homepage, making it easier for you to navigate and explore. Today, we're featuring a collection on Inflation (alas, timely). Check back often to explore new collections. In the meantime, here are some of our online-only entries and biographies:

Division of Labor, by Michael Munger
The 2008 Financial Crisis, by Arnold Kling
Hoover's Economic Policies, by Steven Horwitz
Angus Deaton biography
Richard Thaler biography
Israel Kirzner biography

EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious

Gerd Gigerenzer on How to Stay Smart in a Smart World

IBM's super-computer Watson was a runaway success on Jeopardy! But it wasn't nearly as good at diagnosing cancer. This came as no surprise to Max Planck Institute psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer, who argues that when it comes to life-and-death decisions, we'll always need real, not artificial, brains. Listen as the author of How to Stay Smart in a Smart World tells EconTalk host Russ Roberts why computers aren't nearly as smart as we think. But, Gigerenzer says, human beings need to get smarter in order to avoid being manipulated by people who use AI for their own ends. Explore more.

More Recent Episodes:

Explore EconTalk-Extras on select episodes.

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