"You Just Stick The Right Formula In: A Solution For Every Fool"*

A colleague once told me that I should study philosophy. I retorted that she should study economics. I know very little, but I know I learned more economics working for the old man at the grocery store than I ever did in school.

Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek discusses why it is disappointing that people think that their most important right is voting. I see a person on campus everyday trying to sign people up to vote. I do not see anyone emphasizing the need to uphold individual liberty and the constitution. Democrats (as their name suggests) are horrible about voting. They believe that they are the party of the people, but they do not understand sometimes the people are wrong. They also do not understand that government does and means very little. They do not respect the individual. (The country would not be that much different if Gore or Kerry were elected.) The Republicans are just as bad. They respect the individual's pocketbook and entrepreneurship (sometimes), but want to tell the individual how to live, make love, and eat. (There will be more regulation in the food industry. The USDA has to sustain itself now that the small-farm myth is debunked.)

The continuing Katrina relief effort sickens me. The law of diminishing marginal returns kicked in a hundred billion dollars ago. There are people who are getting rich off these schemes and none of them spent anytime in the Superdome. One day we will have to realize that relief efforts distort insurance markets. People who take risks must bear the consequences of their decisions. I will admit that some of the impoverished could not fully calculate the risk they faced, but we cannot make them better off than they were before the flood. (They will not be made better off anyway. Those who took calculated risks will get both the insurance money and the relief money [at least indirectly.]) We have perverted incentives for all forthcoming disasters.

Here is the research question I would like to answer: How can one justify public organizations that perform the same services as private organizations? How can we justify (especially post-secondary) public education? How can we justify FEMA given the existence of the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and etc.?

My hypothesis is that we cannot. Now, since economics is a pseudoscience, I have to "prove" it.

An update on the Freshman with the perky tits. I have seen her around and she seems to be doing fine. Of course, she does not remember me, but maybe my advice helped.

*Indigo Girls's "Least Complicated"