The Latest from Cafe Hayek

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 162 of Bas Van Der Vossen’s and Jason Brennan’s excellent 2018 book, In Defense of Openness (footnotes deleted; links added):

When people are poor, not only are they more likely to suffer from starvation or disease, but their ability to cope with bad weather and weather disasters is also much worse. We often hear that climate change may lead to more frequent and much worse severe superstorms. It may indeed, even if the United Nations recently release a report arguing that so far, it has not. But it’s worth noting that weather-related deaths have declined dramatically over the past century. Despite a much larger population, the absolute (not just relative) number of yearly weather-related deaths are only about one-fiftieth now what they were 80 years ago.

DBx: The historical record proves – as conclusively as any historical record can prove anything – that the economic growth brought over the past 200 or so years by market-driven innovism (to use Deirdre McCloskey’s proposed substitute term for “capitalism”) is by far humanity’s greatest and most reliable source of safety, cleanliness, and protection from physical harm. In contrast, the history of governments’ treatment of human beings is, shall we say, rather checkered.

“Ironic” does not fully capture the oddity of pursuing greater human safety by entrusting the state with power to rein in competitive, innovative markets.

(Don Boudreaux)

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… is from page 57 of George Will’s 2019 book, The Conservative Sensibility:

The crux of modern radicalism is that human nature has no constancy, that it is merely an unstable imprint of the fluctuating social atmosphere. This fallacy emboldens political actors to adopt agendas of ambitious social engineering.

(Don Boudreaux)

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Katherine Timpf rightly tears into Lindsey Graham for criticizing Rand Paul and Mike Lee for their refusal to defer, as the mindlessly hawkish Graham defers, to Trump on matters of war-making. A slice:

It really is a shame, because Paul was also right about something else: There is a patriotic case for limiting the president’s war powers. In fact, to me, it’s quite clearly the patriotic case. There is, after all, a reason why the Founders gave Congress the sole power to declare war in the first place. They were explicitly rejecting the English model, the one that they fought to be freed from, where the entire country could find itself at war based on [no more] than the whims of the king. They took war seriously; they wanted it debated and carefully considered. The truth is, it’s Paul and Lee’s position, and not Graham’s, that reflects the position of the Founders — and that seems pretty damn patriotic to me.

Kyle Smith bids farewell to the rock drummer Neil Peart.

Also remembering the late Neil Peart is Peter Earle.

Back during his grad-school days at GMU, Steve Horwitz mentioned Peart’s band, Rush, in a letter-to-the-editor of Reason.

David Henderson isn’t impressed with Tyler Cowen’s “state-capacity libertarianism.” A slice:

That brings me to a bigger point. There’s a large elephant (Republican) and a large donkey (Democrat) in the room: the reliably perverse incentives of politicians, voters, and bureaucrats. Compare their incentives to yours and mine when we go to the supermarket. When I shop for food, I get what I pay for. If I want steak, I buy it. If the price of avocados is particularly high this time of year (it is), I buy few or zero. I’m spending my own money and I have an incentive to husband my resources.

Now consider the incentives of politicians and bureaucrats. When they spend money, they spend other people’s money. They have little incentive to worry about costs and a large incentive in some cases to give resources to people they favor. When they regulate, they have little incentive to care about the sometimes devastating effects of their regulations. Voters have bad incentives too. Their individual vote matters so little that they have little incentive to be informed. I stated above that the global warming problem, if indeed a problem, is an example of the tragedy of the commons. But here’s the even worse news: essentially the whole of government is a problem of the tragedy of the commons. If I as a voter and/or activist work diligently to make government somewhat better, I gain only my pro rata share of the benefits. Those who don’t do a thing to make government work better gain as much as I do. That’s why we have underinvestment in making government better.

Jen Maffessanti applauds the profit motive in markets for improving batteries.

I’m delighted to learn from Phil Magness of the new edition of the late Warren Nutter’s superb 1968 book, The Strange World of Ivan Ivanov.