Milei Tries to Tackle Rent Control in Argentina
2024-04-11
The major cities of the world have been facing housing problems for years. With the increase of immigrants and of people experiencing homelessness, the discussion about housing regulation has intensified.The West, once a bastion of ideas of freedom and free markets, continues to harbor central planners whose delusions of omnipotence are paid for by the misfortune of ordinary people as the regulation attempts of these planners fail because such rental laws were not implemented “well enough.”It is not difficult to become familiar with these cases as they may possibly be part of one’s own personal experience when renting a house or an apartment. Stepping back a bit, we find large cities full of vacant housing units and people in deplorable conditions. The universal laws of supply and demand
Failing to Make the Case for Race-Based Reparations
2024-04-09
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito
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Argentina and the Watching World
2024-02-02
Javier Milei has already been sworn in as the new president of Argentina and faces a Promethean challenge, having inherited a country riddled with debt and inflation. Balancing the books is going to be his priority before he can implement most of his innovative ideas, and that is going to cause temporary pain as he has clearly admitted. He does not seem keen on wasting time though, and in his first weeks we have seen a historic revocation of more than three hundred laws that have formed part of the crippling, overregulated Argentinean system for decades (many inherited from the military dictatorships). We have also seen a reduction in the number of ministries and public workers, an update of the official peso-dollar exchange rate to match the real market rate, a colossal effort to deal
Navigating the Complexity of Climate Change: A Closer Look at the Scientific Method and Its Challenges
2024-01-31
The physical sciences have greatly advanced knowledge by elucidating the workings of simple phenomena. In a simple phenomenon, we have a limited number of important variables, all of which are identifiable and measurable. This allows us to run a scientific experiment. In such an experiment, we hold all other variables constant and examine the influence of one variable on the phenomenon. We can therefore measure this variable’s direction and how important it is to this phenomenon. We can then do this same experiment to all the other variables to determine their direction of influence and relative importance. We can identify which assumed relationships are correct and which are wrong. We can draw conclusions on hypotheses about simple phenomena.
Complex phenomena, on the other hand, have
Contra Krugman, Policies of Countering Unemployment Are Costly
2024-01-30
When the economy goes into a recession, most economic commentators believe that the government and the central bank should take steps to counter the rise in unemployment. Some economists believe that lowering unemployment can be achieved without any cost, given that the unemployed workers are idle. According to Paul Krugman, “If you put 100,000 Americans to work right now digging ditches, it is not as if you are taking those 100,000 workers away from other good things they might be doing. You are putting them to work when they would have been doing nothing.”
But how will such a policy be funded? Who pays the unemployed for digging ditches? It seems that Krugman believes that funding can be easily generated by the central bank via money printing.
Now, funding is not about money as such but