What makes an industry competitive is the degree to which entry of new rivals into that industry is politically restricted or free.--Lavoie
This is day three of my move away from Dunkin' coffee. What has burned me is the gradual increase in the cost, the arbitrary pricing of refills and a new cup, a thin poorly insulated thing that burns your hand and gets cold fast. Despite my indignation, it is not all their fault. Jurisdictions around the world are banning single-use plastic takeaway containers and cups. Starbucks Corp. goes through about 6 billion cups a year. Dunkin’ now makes close to 70 percent of its revenue from coffee drinks, through 1 billion coffee cups a year. The U.S. accounts for about 120 billion paper, plastic and foam coffee cups each year, or about one-fifth of the global total. Almost every last one of them—99.75 percent—ends up as trash, where even paper cups can take more than 20 years to decompose.
So bureaucrats have successfully changed how I drink coffee.
For restaurants, minimum wage hikes usually mean higher menu prices and fewer employee hours, according to a survey released Wednesday.
It's hard to believe that the center of gravity of the Dems is way left of him and he may have a serious fight within his own party but listening to him was a real voyage back in time. Nonetheless, he gave a pretty good speech in Pittsburgh.
Violence in Venezuela. I hope Sean Penn can help.
Wisconsin is known as “America’s Dairyland,” but the milk makers who gave the state its moniker are vanishing, falling prey to a variety of impediments, including President Trump and his global trade war. Over the past two years, nearly 1,200 of the state’s dairy farms have stopped milking cows and so far this year, another 212 have disappeared, with many shifting production to beef or vegetables. The total number of herds in Wisconsin is now below 8,000 — about half as many as 15 years ago. In 2018, 49 Wisconsin farms filed for bankruptcy — the highest of any state in the country, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation....Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, which were intended to help American manufacturers but have set off retaliatory tariffs from Mexico, Canada, Europe and China on American dairy products. Most painful for Wisconsin’s dairy farmers has been a 25% tariff that Mexico placed on American cheese, which is made with a significant volume of the state’s milk production. (nyt)
By the Social Security Trustees estimates, the trust fund was large enough to pay 3.5 years worth of benefits in 2010, but can only pay 3 years worth of benefits today, will only be able to pay 2 years by 2023, and will be exhausted by 2034. Yet, every congressional Social Security proposal introduced this year would do one of two things: add a new parental leave benefit, or significantly increase projected costs through a general benefit increase.
And people actually want to give these characters more budgetary discretion.
On this day in 1963, James Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, became the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
The Scarce and the Non-scarce
Tucker discusses Munger's explanation of the distinctions between capitalism and socialism by emphasizing several important points. The pro-capitalist camp believe in ownership, prices, and production structures for scarce goods. There is no better, more peaceful, more productive way to deal with the problem that there is not enough of everything for everyone. The best solution is to deploy a peaceful method of exchange and production so that, over time, there is more wealth for everyone.
This is day three of my move away from Dunkin' coffee. What has burned me is the gradual increase in the cost, the arbitrary pricing of refills and a new cup, a thin poorly insulated thing that burns your hand and gets cold fast. Despite my indignation, it is not all their fault. Jurisdictions around the world are banning single-use plastic takeaway containers and cups. Starbucks Corp. goes through about 6 billion cups a year. Dunkin’ now makes close to 70 percent of its revenue from coffee drinks, through 1 billion coffee cups a year. The U.S. accounts for about 120 billion paper, plastic and foam coffee cups each year, or about one-fifth of the global total. Almost every last one of them—99.75 percent—ends up as trash, where even paper cups can take more than 20 years to decompose.
So bureaucrats have successfully changed how I drink coffee.
One of two alleged spies, who was also under investigation for a possible link to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, has been found dead inside his jail cell.
15 MLB teams saw a decrease in their worst March-April gate, which can serve as a relatively informed snapshot of a club’s season-ticket base. Twelve teams’ worst gate was 11,000 or less, with four teams – Pittsburgh (8,523), Cincinnati (7,799), Baltimore (6,585) and Miami (5,934) sporting a base of less than 10,000.
There's a lot of alcohol abuse ads on Pirate games. Targeted advertising.,
15 MLB teams saw a decrease in their worst March-April gate, which can serve as a relatively informed snapshot of a club’s season-ticket base. Twelve teams’ worst gate was 11,000 or less, with four teams – Pittsburgh (8,523), Cincinnati (7,799), Baltimore (6,585) and Miami (5,934) sporting a base of less than 10,000.
There's a lot of alcohol abuse ads on Pirate games. Targeted advertising.,
For restaurants, minimum wage hikes usually mean higher menu prices and fewer employee hours, according to a survey released Wednesday.
It's hard to believe that the center of gravity of the Dems is way left of him and he may have a serious fight within his own party but listening to him was a real voyage back in time. Nonetheless, he gave a pretty good speech in Pittsburgh.
Violence in Venezuela. I hope Sean Penn can help.
Wisconsin is known as “America’s Dairyland,” but the milk makers who gave the state its moniker are vanishing, falling prey to a variety of impediments, including President Trump and his global trade war. Over the past two years, nearly 1,200 of the state’s dairy farms have stopped milking cows and so far this year, another 212 have disappeared, with many shifting production to beef or vegetables. The total number of herds in Wisconsin is now below 8,000 — about half as many as 15 years ago. In 2018, 49 Wisconsin farms filed for bankruptcy — the highest of any state in the country, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation....Mr. Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, which were intended to help American manufacturers but have set off retaliatory tariffs from Mexico, Canada, Europe and China on American dairy products. Most painful for Wisconsin’s dairy farmers has been a 25% tariff that Mexico placed on American cheese, which is made with a significant volume of the state’s milk production. (nyt)
By the Social Security Trustees estimates, the trust fund was large enough to pay 3.5 years worth of benefits in 2010, but can only pay 3 years worth of benefits today, will only be able to pay 2 years by 2023, and will be exhausted by 2034. Yet, every congressional Social Security proposal introduced this year would do one of two things: add a new parental leave benefit, or significantly increase projected costs through a general benefit increase.
And people actually want to give these characters more budgetary discretion.
On this day in 1963, James Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, became the first American to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
The Scarce and the Non-scarce
Tucker discusses Munger's explanation of the distinctions between capitalism and socialism by emphasizing several important points. The pro-capitalist camp believe in ownership, prices, and production structures for scarce goods. There is no better, more peaceful, more productive way to deal with the problem that there is not enough of everything for everyone. The best solution is to deploy a peaceful method of exchange and production so that, over time, there is more wealth for everyone.
At the same time, capitalists believe in universal sharing of non-scarce goods like knowledge. This distinction between scarce and non-scarce helps explain so much about the world around us. We have to learn to distinguish them so that we can apply tools of production and allocation in the proper way. Scarce goods absolutely require the application of economizing; non-scarce goods can be freely and expansively shared without the need for economizing.
The socialist left makes a mess of this distinction, mixing up the two things. They want socialism for scarce goods and private ownership for non-scarce goods. How so? They want free college for everyone, health care for everyone, food for everyone, and they advocate all this with near-zero appreciation for the reality that these are scarce goods and so there are massive costs associated with these plans and everyone must bear them, not to mention endless force to make people do what they would otherwise not want to do.
At the same time, these same people apply the limitations of scarcity where it need not apply. They say there can be no cultural appropriation even though culture is a non-scarce good that is malleable and universally sharable. They demand identity politics even though identity is something anyone can adopt without taking away anything from anyone else. Identity is a non-scarce good and need not be commodified like a physical good.
Socialists are mostly intellectuals. Their most valued personal production is within the realm of ideas. They share these ideas constantly with anyone who will listen. Their goal is to seek influence, which can occur without the need for allocating and apportioning their product. They are producing goods that are non-scarce.
They can’t understand why doctors, colleges, food growers, and factories cannot do the same. The problem of scarcity does not present itself in their profession so they remain oblivious as to the reality that scarcity exists for every single good other than ideas.
Why the rising popularity of socialism? Munger hints at the answer: “Much of the new wealth is digital, and takes the form of music, movies, or other entertainment or software, code that once written down can be reproduced at no cost and transmitted worldwide essentially for free.”
The great migration from the physical world to the digital world has vastly expanded the realm and pool of non-scarce wealth. That’s a wonderful thing. But this might tempt intellectuals to believe the same thing can happen in the physical world. And yet no matter how much we digitize, it doesn’t obliterate the essential distinction between scarce and non-scarce.
If a Twitter post can be universally distributed, why not vegan dinners and brain surgeries? Now you know the answer. This is the difference between scarce and non-scarce. One cannot be shared unto infinity and the other can. That’s a huge difference.
If we can’t get that straight, we can never learn to think with economic rationality. Even worse, failing to understand this, and barreling ahead with a system that mixes the two up, can destroy all prosperity and liberty.
(from a clever article in AIER)
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