You've the right to remain ------

The Urumqi government said Friday that families of "innocent" people killed in the unrest will receive about $29,300 in compensation, but it was unclear how officials would make that determination.

An impressive critique of UK Prime Minister

via Stumbling and Mumbling

The Private Armies of Iraq

The market value 100 billion dollars;




Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq
by David Isenberg

Private Sector, Public Wars: Contractors in Combat - Afghanistan, Iraq, and Future Conflicts (The Changing Face of War)
by James Jay Carafano

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
by Jeremy Scahill

Sending Mercenaries Into Darfur?

Ownership Congestion? Tragedy of Anticommons?

A former World Banker;

Well, I’ve been finding ownership puzzles in a host of disparate places, like waiting around in airports and wondering why we don’t build more runways. Just 25 new runways at our busiest airports would solve most air travel delays. Why don’t we build them? In Europe, for instance, I started thinking about why cell phones work so much better there than here. The answer, in part, is that over 90 percent of our prime spectrum is dead air. Talking to research scientists I asked why we have so many pharmaceutical patents today but so few new drugs that actually help people. My students clued me in to another puzzle: why has African-American farm ownership dropped 98 percent in the last century? And why are so many old television shows, like China Beach and WKRP in Cincinnati, still not available on DVD? Turns out, all of these problems are really the same problem. Private ownership usually creates wealth. But too much ownership has the opposite effect – it creates gridlock. Once people see this free market paradox, once we have a shared language for gridlock, we can begin to talk about it and then to fix it...

A drug company executive tells me he may have a better Alzheimer’s treatment. But to get FDA approval and bring it to market, he has to license dozens and dozens of patents relevant to testing for safety and side effects. So negotiations fail and the Alzheimer’s drug sits on a shelf, even though my informant is confident it could save countless lives and earn billions of dollars.

Very few people or organizations are speaking out against this – against the underuse of property rights. Whom do you lobby for drugs that don’t yet exist or for cures that people can’t yet see? Gridlock, that is, resource underuse, is invisible in comparison with overuse – everyone can see the dramatic results of fisheries being depleted or air being polluted. But with wasteful underuse, the effects are almost always hidden. So when drugs, wireless services, DVDs, and runways go missing, we don’t really have champions ready to set it right. The flip side of gridlock is that it’s one of the great entrepreneurial and political opportunities of our era....

The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives, Michael Heller

Related;
The legal framework for private sector development in a transitional economy : the case of Poland

The Liberal Commons

Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research

Eminent Domain and the New York Times

Symmetric Tragedies: Commons and Anticommons
James M. Buchanan and Yong J. Yoon

Murketing

The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are
Rob Walker

Sloppy writing reflects (and advertises) sloppy thinking

Over at MR, Tyler Cowen quotes John Cochrane on the Milton Friedman protest letter;

...it is to me sadder still how atrociously written this letter is. These people devote their lives to writing on social issues, and teaching freshmen (including mine) how to think and write clearly. Yet it’s awful.

Milton would probably have said the same thing as he had said to Gary Becker;

"People often excuse bad writing by saying that they know what they mean, and simply have difficulty expressing it. That is nonsense. If you cannot state a preposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.I took that lesson to heart. I learned that trying to write something clearly and unambiguously was the best way to find errors and omissions in my reasoning and clarify my own thought.

It was in a letter to Gary Becker in May 1955, when I was in Britain, referring to a draft of his thesis that he had sent to me: Nine times out of ten, I wrote after criticizing his exposition, sloppy writing reflects (and advertises) sloppy thinking.

Related;
Milton Friedman on Iraq War
Anecdotes about Milton Friedman

"I Do Not Believe the State Has Any Right to Tell Me What to Put In My Head"

Markets in Everything- The G-Shot

These services add up to what he calls a “boutique cosmetic gynaecological laser surgery programme”, because customers will often have several at once. He does hymen repair, but doesn’t talk about it since receiving death threats from religious groups.

His latest product is the G-Shot. This is when a quantity of collagen — the same stuff that goes into lips — is injected into the rough area inside the vagina that is supposed to constitute the G-spot. It costs £955 (£1,290 for a double hit), and lasts four months before being reabsorbed. Matlock also ships G-Shot kits to doctors all over the world.

-The man who wants to reshape your private parts

Russian businesses fighting poverty in UK

Indonesia- A Budding Democracy

Vice-president thinks the country is 'too free'?

Narayana Murthy- Bill Gates of India

N. R. Narayana Murthy- a true Indian hero.

"I want to be remembered as a fair person...nicety I don't care"

He attributes the success of the firm to the reforms of 1991.

Related;
Infosys Foundation

Globalisation's Hit Men

John Perkins

Wine Library

tv.winelibrary.com

Related;
Bottoms Up | Wine Guru Gary Vaynerchuk

Why more Americans are visiting Cuba

A great country
exists in North America
Where I’ll get,
looking for my ideal world

What a great nation,
behind our immense sea
Where I am sure
my life will change

And I will triumph
My talent and luck will be my tools
Cause I will fight and the opportunity
In America will lie

McMafia- Fall of Communism and Rise of Organized Crime?

Hamilton vs Jefferson

From the recent Obama speech;

In a city of landmarks, we meet at Cooper Union, just uptown from Federal Hall, where George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States. With all history that's passed through the narrow canyons of Lower Manhattan, it's worth taking a moment to reflect on the role that the market has played in the development of the American story. The great task before our founders was putting into practice the ideal that government could simultaneously serve liberty and advance the common good. For Alexander Hamilton, the young secretary of the treasury, that task was bound to the vigor of the American economy. Hamilton had a strong belief in the power of the market, but he balanced that belief with a conviction that human enterprise, and I quote, "may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government." Government, he believed, had an important role to play in advancing our common prosperity. So he nationalized the state Revolutionary War debts, weaving together the economies of the states and creating an American system of credit and capital markets. And he encouraged manufacturing and infrastructure, so products could be moved to market. Hamilton met fierce opposition from Thomas Jefferson, who worried that this brand of capitalism would favor the interests of the few over the many. Jefferson preferred an agrarian economy, because he believed that it would give individual landowners freedom and that this freedom would nurture our democratic institutions. But despite their differences, there was one thing that Jefferson and Hamilton agreed on: that economic growth depended upon the talent and ingenuity of the American people; that in order to harness that talent, opportunity had to remain open to all; and that through education in particular, every American could climb the ladder of social and economic mobility and achieve the American dream. In the more than two centuries since then, we've struggled to balance the same forces that confronted Hamilton and Jefferson.: self-interest and community, markets and democracy, the concentration of wealth and power and the necessity of transparency and opportunity for each and every citizen. Throughout this saga, Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America's progress. It's a market that's created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and opportunity for generations of Americans; a market that has provided great rewards to innovators and risk-takers who've made America a beacon for science and technology and discovery.

But the American experiment has worked in large part because we guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That's why we've put in place rules of the road: to make competition fair and open, and honest. We've done this not to stifle but rather to advance prosperity and liberty. As I said at Nasdaq last September, the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well-being of American business (OOTC:ARBU) , its capital markets and its American people are aligned. I think that all of us here today would acknowledge that we've lost some of that sense of shared prosperity. Now, this loss has not happened by accident. It's because of decisions made in board rooms, on trading floors and in Washington. Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we've failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practice. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both. Nor is this trend new. The concentrations of economic power and the failures of our political system to protect the American economy and American consumers from its worst excesses have been a staple of our past: most famously in the 1920s, when such excesses ultimately plunged the country into the Great Depression. That is when government stepped in to create a series of regulatory structures, from FDIC to the Glass-Steagall Act, to serve as a corrective, to protect the American people and American business.

Food and People

Italy’s Trash Crisis Taints Reputation of a Prized Cheese;

In the last few months, sales of buffalo mozzarella have dropped 40 percent, the product’s trade association says. The problem makes for a near-perfect morality play about Italy: For years, the nation’s paralyzed political class has done little to halt huge-scale illegal dumping of trash, some of it toxic, around Naples. That area happens to produce some of the best mozzarella....
“It really is a problem of criminals making a counterfeit product from God-knows-what,” said Mr. Ursini, who expects to open a branch in New York soon. “Mozzarella-wise, we’re in good shape. I just hope the whole thing doesn’t become a panic.”

Much is at stake: In a business that stretches back nearly to antiquity — invading barbarians are believed to have brought the first buffalo from Asia as early as the sixth century — some 30,000 tons of the high-quality protected cheese are produced each year, representing nearly half a billion dollars in sales.

Virus Kills Chile’s Salmon;

But the latest outbreak has occurred after a rash of nonviral illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States.

Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, here in Chile regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of the drugs, researchers said.

A reminder- the Mercatus Center Master's Fellowship Program

The deadline for applications for the Fall 2008 semester is April 18, 2008.

The Mercatus Center Master's Fellowship Program is a competitive fellowship program for students in George Mason University's MA economics program (thesis option) who are interested in pursuing an advanced degree in applied economics in preparation for a career in business or public policy. Our master's fellows take specialized courses which provide analytic training in applying economic ideas to solve problems in the world.

The Mercatus Center Master's Fellowship program is targeted toward students with an interest in gaining advanced training in economics, but who do not anticipate a career in academia. Students who anticipate working in public policy or in a decision making position in business are ideal candidates for this fellowship.

Quote of the Day

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

-Thomas Jefferson

Related;
Hamilton vs. Jefferson: Whose economic vision was better?

It is well known that Hamilton and Jefferson disagreed strongly about the national bank. Hamilton was the architect of the First Bank of the United States, believing it essential to the financing of the federal government and to the establishment of a robust domestic banking system. As such, Hamilton is considered a pioneer of central banking and a forebearer of the modern Federal Reserve. Jefferson believed the bank would put too much power over the government in the hands of the bank’s owners.

But the issue went deeper than that. Jefferson, in fact, didn’t like banks at all. Steadfast in his belief that working the land was the only “honest” way to make a living, he saw bankers as essentially swindlers, and he didn’t trust them. Hamilton, by contrast, thought banks were to be a vital part of the American future—if we want a strong economy, we need lending, and lending is the business of banks. Better to have American banks doing the lending, he argued, than British or other foreign banks.

This disagreement is part of a long history of controversy about banking. There are basically two opposing views: One sees debt as essentially bad and looks at bankers as exploiting borrowers’ bad fortunes or poor judgments; the other sees lenders as providing a useful service for which there is enough demand that borrowers are willing to pay interest.

In retrospect, it may seem obvious that Hamilton was right, at least in predicting how America would develop. But this controversy is still alive, and Jefferson’s voice can be heard today, for example, in the reaction to problems in the subprime mortgage market.

Brad DeLong on Karl Marx the economist

This week I asked my graduate students to write on the following question: whether--and how--Karl Marx is relevant to a twenty-first century neoclassical economist.

Markets in Baby-related services

The Cost of a Baby;

The Georgetown psychologist fell into the role of toilet-training coach. She mastered potty training while working with children in an early-intervention program in the District in the late 1990s. About five years ago, she shared her techniques with a few groups of mothers. Word of Zimmitti's skills soon lit up local Internet discussion groups.

Now eager parents line up to pay her $250 for a consultation, with topics like quelling a toilet rebellion and pointers on how to avoid one.

"Sometimes a parent will say, 'How about I pay you $5,000 and you potty train for me?' " Zimmitti said. "They're halfway joking."

Zimmitti is part of a niche service sector that has appeal among busy, anxious and often well-heeled parents in the region who want help with some of the most important and intimate child-rearing duties. Many simply want to carve out more time to spend with their children. For them, paying a personal shopper $30 to spend an afternoon tracking down a coveted tutu for a 2-year-old is money well spent. For other parents, the baby-services sector is a lifeline that can rescue them from sleepless nights or protect their children from getting hurt at home.

The prices for baby-specific services run the gamut: $85 for an hour with a lactation consultant, several hundred more for childproofing gear and someone to install it, $4,000 for five nights with a sleep trainer -- all before a baby is out of diapers. In all, the government estimates, middle-income households spend an average of $10,600 for a child's first year.

Diana Ostergard of Ashburn spent several thousand dollars on a coach to help teach her 8-month-old son who had severe acid reflux to sleep more than two hours at a time. "It was worth every dollar," she said. "I would pay double."

The appetite for baby-related services, which can be found in many big cities, sets today's parents apart from previous generations, according to historians and sociologists. Hiring someone to help with toilet training or to teach parents how to perform infant massage "is something new," said Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of "The Commercialization of Intimate Life."

Hochschild and others who study modern family life tick off a host of reasons why this shift has come about: luxury services trickling down to those who aren't mega-wealthy, the rise of households with two working parents, longer work hours for white-collar workers and more people living far from extended family networks.

"People are more structurally isolated. We don't have grandparents or aunts or sisters to turn to," said the Columbia University historian Steven Mintz, author of "Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood." "We are also busier. Our work hours have gotten longer. If you don't have a lot of time, that induces guilt. We all want to give our kids the same upbringing we had or better but don't feel like we have the time."

-A Coach at the Crib And a Consultant at the Potty

Related;
The Birth of Parentonomics