Michael Munger
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Manners, the Coase Theorem, and a Park Bench in London
“There are some situations, though, where no one knows who has the initial property right assignment. Under those circumstances, the negotiation is more free form, but the best outcome still depends on how much the parties involved value the alternatives.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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Dismal is Better
“Today the social isolation of the economically minded has different proximate causes, but the underlying reason economic reasoning stands alone is that it stands athwart the desire of many people, perhaps most people, to rearrange the actual world into a world that they can imagine.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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Is it a LOLR? No, It’s a Trap
“The reason this is infuriating is that we are being told that taxpayers should be willing to double down, to reimburse even-more-careless depositors for their negligent inattention to risk.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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Minimum Wage Hurts Whom It Claims to Help
“Being able to work, and feel productive, is an important part of the social aspect of our economy. Service jobs are disappearing fast enough, without having the process accelerated by misguided support for increasing the minimum wage.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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Delivering on the Promise of Platforms
“The mistake of outsiders was to see Amazon as a bookseller; since books were a dying business (not true, actually), having a web site to sell books had limited upside at best, even if Amazon could survive against the market power of Barnes and Noble and the other bookstore behemoths.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Directionalists vs. Destinationists
“Being proud of the purity of your positions by defining Friedman, Stigler (and Munger, let’s face it) as ‘reds’ is a recipe for well-deserved irrelevance in a system governed by numerical majorities.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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Why Austrian Economists Are Not Employed as Policy Advisers
“The problem is not so much our reliance on economics as our reliance on politics. Politics insists that we must pretend to believe in the fiction of central direction of markets as effective policy.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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China: House Divided
“To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the Chinese commercial state cannot stand divided against itself. China will not cease to exist, but it will cease to be divided. It will become all authoritarian, or it will become capitalist.” ~ Michael Munger
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Chatbots Killed the Academic Star
“The standard career strategy (‘write and publish a whole bunch of papers even if no one ever reads them’) will no longer be viable. It’s not clear this is bad, in most disciplines.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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Every Flaw in Consumers is Worse in Voters, Part Deux
“A ‘good’ industrial policy is impossible in a democracy. Progressives who want industrial policies don’t have that position only because they mistrust markets. Progressives mistrust democracy, and always have.” ~ Michael C. Munger
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•
Manners, the Coase Theorem, and a Park Bench in London
“There are some situations, though, where no one knows who has the initial property right assignment. Under those circumstances, the negotiation is more free form, but the best outcome still depends on how much the parties involved value the alternatives.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
Dismal is Better
“Today the social isolation of the economically minded has different proximate causes, but the underlying reason economic reasoning stands alone is that it stands athwart the desire of many people, perhaps most people, to rearrange the actual world into a world that they can imagine.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
Is it a LOLR? No, It’s a Trap
“The reason this is infuriating is that we are being told that taxpayers should be willing to double down, to reimburse even-more-careless depositors for their negligent inattention to risk.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
Minimum Wage Hurts Whom It Claims to Help
“Being able to work, and feel productive, is an important part of the social aspect of our economy. Service jobs are disappearing fast enough, without having the process accelerated by misguided support for increasing the minimum wage.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
Delivering on the Promise of Platforms
“The mistake of outsiders was to see Amazon as a bookseller; since books were a dying business (not true, actually), having a web site to sell books had limited upside at best, even if Amazon could survive against the market power of Barnes and Noble and the other bookstore behemoths.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Directionalists vs. Destinationists
“Being proud of the purity of your positions by defining Friedman, Stigler (and Munger, let’s face it) as ‘reds’ is a recipe for well-deserved irrelevance in a system governed by numerical majorities.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
Why Austrian Economists Are Not Employed as Policy Advisers
“The problem is not so much our reliance on economics as our reliance on politics. Politics insists that we must pretend to believe in the fiction of central direction of markets as effective policy.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
China: House Divided
“To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the Chinese commercial state cannot stand divided against itself. China will not cease to exist, but it will cease to be divided. It will become all authoritarian, or it will become capitalist.” ~ Michael Munger
-
•
Chatbots Killed the Academic Star
“The standard career strategy (‘write and publish a whole bunch of papers even if no one ever reads them’) will no longer be viable. It’s not clear this is bad, in most disciplines.” ~ Michael C. Munger
-
•
Every Flaw in Consumers is Worse in Voters, Part Deux
“A ‘good’ industrial policy is impossible in a democracy. Progressives who want industrial policies don’t have that position only because they mistrust markets. Progressives mistrust democracy, and always have.” ~ Michael C. Munger