Author Archives: Charlie Deist

Central Planning and the Census

By Charlie Deist | Published: March 13, 2010
“If we don’t know how many people there are, how do we know how many buses we need?” –Census Advertisement on an AC Transit bus in Berkeley, CA. I regularly use public transportation to get around Berkeley and I usually find the service to be good. I don’t know exactly how much it costs AC Transit [...]
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Philip Berg for San Fransisco’s 8th Congressional District

By Charlie Deist | Published: March 11, 2010
Last night, libertarian congressional candidate Philip Berg spoke to Students for Liberty. He is running against Nancy Pelosi and is campaigning on a platform of “libertarians against capitalism,” which was also the name of his talk. Bryan Caplan has posted on the subject in response to Freeman editor Sheldon Richman, and I thought that I agreed [...]
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Coasian Bargaining FAIL

By Charlie Deist | Published: March 11, 2010
I recently had the unfortunate experience of finding out that the shiny red bike I bought a few weeks ago from the Ashby Flea was stolen property. I was notified via a napkin taped to my handlebars that said that I had stolen her bike along with a request to please call “Mimi” and return it. Shucks. When I [...]
Posted in Law, Our Economic World | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Blogging Break

By Charlie Deist | Published: February 28, 2010
In lieu of upcoming midterms and essays, I will not have an opportunity to blog about a number of things that have been on my mind lately. I’m going to outline a few things that I expect to have time to blog about later on this week: Thinking clearly about health-care reform. Book review of Albert Jay [...]
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Going Meta: Part 1

By Charlie Deist | Published: February 25, 2010
I’ve always suspected that I have an above-normal predisposition towards analyzing the nature my thoughts and beliefs, putting me in the company of one of my favorite philosophers, Robin Hanson. For example, ever since I began forming opinions about the way the world works, I have been obsessed with understanding why my beliefs about reality differ [...]
Posted in Knowledge problem, Philosophy, Psychology & Behavior, Self Interest | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Ron Paul on Assassinations

By Charlie Deist | Published: February 25, 2010
Interesting stuff. Social Bookmarking
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Ideas Lead to Tragedy in Rural India

By Charlie Deist | Published: February 24, 2010
This WSJ article offers a textbook case of a “good” idea gone wrong because of the unintended consequences. Last week, a commenter on this blog defended the Federal government’s early involvement in agriculture: “As for agriculture, again, you don’t seem to understand either history or the functioning of free markets. Making recommendations about what to plant [...]
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A Question for the First Lady

By Charlie Deist | Published: February 16, 2010
The SF Chronicle recently reported on Michelle Obama’s ambitious plans to curb childhood obesity through federally funded programs aimed at helping parents and children make better eating decisions. The article stresses the urgency of government action given sky-rocketing health-costs and even goes as far to label rising obesity as a national security concern, since more [...]
Posted in Freedom, Government Spending, Unintended Consequences, politics | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Stossel Reports on Gov’t Abuse of Power

By Charlie Deist | Published: February 15, 2010
As many predicted, Team Obama has decided to confront climate change with specific expenditures of tax-payer money that end up in the pockets of the politically well-connected, rather than with broad-based tax incentives. The comments section below the video contains a gem from 4Stanzas: So, we’re paying higher taxes and high rates of inflation in the hopes [...]
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Sowell, Mises, and the Pain of Going Against the Grain

By Charlie Deist | Published: February 13, 2010
In the last two days, I have observed that people who possess strong convictions about the way the world is can frequently turn bitter if their worldview substantially differs from popular opinion. The first piece of evidence was a quote by Milton Friedman about Ludwig von Mises: “The story I remember best happened at the initial [...]
Posted in Folk Economics, Psychology & Behavior | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment