Skip to content

Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Battle for the Dream

 

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a

7 Comments

Pete Boettke: economist extraordinaire

The WSJ has a well-deserved, laudatory profile of Peter Boettke of George Mason University. The Journal stresses mainly his role in the Hayek vs. Keynes debate. I have learned from him in the area of Hayek vs. central planning, the subject more relevant to my own interests in long-run development. He is also a generous colleague and friend. Congrats, Pete!

3 Comments

I have a dream: the Powerpoint aid jargon version

Recycled this on Huffington Post for tomorrow’s 47th anniversary of MLK’s greatest speech of all time.

3 Comments

From Russia With Color, 1909

This amazing collection of color photographs taken in Russia in 1909-1912 is really unmissable (H/T Mari Kuraishi).

The picture is of an autocrat in Uzbekistan. Since then, there has been much progress, in the form of cheap polyester suits for today’s autocrats in Uzbekistan.

1 Comment

The Ground Zero mosque and cognitive biases

Among the many other things involved in this controversy, stereotypes of Muslims are not exactly helping.

As this blog is (excessively)  fond of arguing, ethnic stereotypes are partly fueled by an obscure cognitive bias known as Reversing Conditional Probabilities. As a long ago Aid Watch post argued (sorry for indulging in self-quotation, but hey it’s August, time for reruns):

{People perceive} from media coverage that the probability that IF you are a terrorist, THEN you are a Muslim

Also posted in Cognitive biases | 17 Comments

Media now cares about Pakistan; aid workers’ surprising lack of confidence in Afghan army protection; North Korean jeans

Now abundant coverage of Pakistan flood, is it making up for previous non-story?

Sorry, Karzai, Aid workers do want to keep their own guards in Afghanistan, as compared to corrupt and incompetent offical Afghan forces.

I always argue that comparative advantage is surprising, but even so was caught off guard by newly fashionable North Korean jeans.

4 Comments

Did Gates and Buffett do more good as businessmen than as philanthropists?

Provocative case for “yes” in today’s Wall Street Journal (gated link), by Kimberley Dennis,  President of Searle Freedom Trust:

Wealthy businessmen often feel obligated to ‘give back.’ Who says they’ve taken anything?

Full disclosure: DRI benefits from post-docs indirectly funded by the Searle Foundation.

7 Comments

Fun with serious data

See the full size chart and make new ones here.

13 Comments

Why can’t leading conservative magazine understand freedom?

Found this  mysterious transmission on a robot named R2D2 Twitter from  joshuafoust: ”National Review Online endorses authoritarian capitalism. Help us, Obi Wan @bill_easterly, you’re our only hope!”

I won’t let you down, Leia&Luke AKA @joshuafoust…  The bizarre article in question is titled China Teaches the U.S. Lessons about Economic Freedom. The argument seems roughly to be that China’s rapid growth is explained by its positive change in economic freedom after 1978. Throw in…

9 Comments

18th century wetbacks

Update: see end of post

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. (

11 Comments