Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Yesterday, I began a discussion of the work of   Professor Guillermo Calvo, now of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, in an effort to answer the question in the headline of this blog entry, and I got so far as to introduce the word "stickiness." Let's proceed from there. Calvo does acknowledge that fiat money contains within itself the principle of its own destruction. But ... why does its destruction take so long? Even if deliberate government buttressing of the use of its money were "completely absent," he says, this factor would slow the aforementioned destruction.  Stockiness is simply a convenient name for the behavioral fact that suppliers of goods and services "broadcast, far and wide, their willingness to take fiat money in exchange" for what they are selling. Further, private sellers often "reaffirm their willingness to do so over extended periods of time." The suppliers find it useful as a mar...

I'll treat you today, dear reader, to another blog post inspired by shenanigans over at Yahoo!Answers. Someone asked, "Can anyone philosophically justify the existence of private property?" Some further explanation indicated that he had titles to land especially in mind. For the record, my answer was what regular readers of this blog would likely expect.   The pragmatic answer is surely best: those social institutions are right which work, over time and on the whole. Private title to land is justified, if at all, only on that basis. Whether it IS justified by practical consequences is a fascinating empirical question. Consider Richard Pipes' book on this question, for example. That is much more interesting than trying to parse the differences between Locke and Rousseau on some primordial appropriation. But I'm bring this into Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed today because of another commenter. He ignored the specific matter of land and gave us a little lect...

Suppose it was your assignment, dear reader, to set up a debate for some conference about "Crude Oil Consumption in the United States." Your debate, as part of that conference, would have to involve two reputable figures, two distinct points of view on that subject, and one proposition, on which your speakers would take respectively a "pro" and a "con" position. What kind of speakers might you look for, and what kind of proposition could best express the opposition you'd be trying to bring out? There are lots of approaches one might take of course....four occur to me. 1. Resolved: that in five years, the consumption of crude oil, per capita, will be greater than at present. 2. ... that in five years, the consumption of crude oil, overall, will be greater than at present. 3. ...that in five years, much of what is now accomplished through burning crude oil, or other carbon fuels, will be accomplished by alternative means. 4. ... that in ...

She (my friend) then added her own comment: There were a lot of things wrong with the 50's, but one parent working with another one staying home (which they owned) was doable when the onus of taxes wasn't on citizens. The onus of taxes wasn't on the citizens because it was on the "corporations" you see. She seemed to be agreeing with the Sanders quote she attached that we ought to get back to that. But what does it mean to tax corporations exactly? Is it a free lunch for the "citizens"? Of course not. Depending on a variety of circumstances, a corporate tax gets money into the Treasury from one of three sources: the shareholders of the corporation in question; the consumers of the products and services it creates; the employees. If the labor market for the sort of labor a particular corporation needs will allow, the corporation (a legal form for the interactions of natural people) will pass the cost of the tax that way. If the labor market does...

The latest catalog to reach my desk from the Brit business/economics publisher Edward Elgar focuses on management issues. It's also for "handbooks," though I'm not sure how that's defined other than as books with the word "Handbook" on the cover. Three random selections, and a wisecrack for each: 1. Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship Policies in Central and Eastern Europe. 272 pages, $160. Boris Badinov is an entrepreneur now. Natasha is a venture capitalist. "And what is your business plan, my darlink?" "It involves makink big trouble for moose and squirrel." 2. Handbook of Longitudinal Research Methods in Organisation and Business Studies 383 pages, $225 Yes, I had to look it up. "Longitudinal" in the relevant sense means that in the studiesin question the same subjects are observed repeatedly over a period of time. It has nothing to do with, say, trochaic meter, although that was the first thought i...

I was thinking of writing here something about the now-concluded college basketball season. But since Great Britain's former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher passed away recently I've changed my mind. I think the best tribute I can do Thatcher is to continue my recent discussions of some considerations pertaining to market economies. I'm told that was something of an interest of hers. Besides, I didn't have anything especially incisive to say about basketball. Today's question, then: First: what IS a stock option? It is either an option to buy (call) a stock or an option to sell (put) a stock. An option to buy a stock is a contract by which the buyer acquires the right (without incurring any obligation) to purchase shares of a stock at a specific price on a specified date.   An option to sell is much the same, except as you might already have inferred, the buyer of an option to sell acquires the right (again, without obligation) to sell shares of a...

Almost nobody talks about "price parity" any more. A few decades back the term was the common coin of politcal debate, central to arguments about agricultural price subsidies. During the depression, Rooseveltian economists decided that a period about 20 years before that , 1910-1914, had been a golden age for farmers. The price of goods farmers had to buy (made by urban folk) were in a "parity" with the price of the goods they were selling, their crops and slaughtered critters. So (the Brain Trust decided) the goal of federal policy ought to be to get back to that parity. Ag subsidies, direct and indirect, were justified for over the next 30 years or so on the basis of helping farmers return to or maintain parity, defined by pre-WWI price relationships. These subsidies were by the the 1960s receiving heavy critical fire all along the political spectrum, and although the critics didn't manage to stop the subsidies (which are still very much with us in ...