Professor of Economics | Political Economy - Public Choice - History of Economic Thought - Austrian Economics
Murfreesboro, TN
Joined August 2014
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Delighted to be in this @CivitasOutlook Symposium on the 250th of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations:
Our wonderful @CivitasOutlook Symposium on the 250th of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations:
Ryan Hanley
@Smithdanj
@MaxSkjonsberg
Craig Smith
civitasoutlook.com/research/…
Daniel J. Smith retweeted
For Adam Smith, government policies should aim at maximizing not abstract national wealth, but the material gains of ordinary people.
Read more from @Smithdanj:
civitasoutlook.pulse.ly/pub2…
If you think this is true, I’ll happily set up reading groups at colleges around the nation with selections from Marx vs Smith (I’ve done this at my campus), or Hayek, if you fund them. If Marx is obviously superior, then you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
@ErikSherman, this is one of the reading groups I did. I asked a socialist professor across campus to choose the socialist readings, but he refused to work with me. Next time, I will likely use @PhilWMagness's The Best of Marx, which offers an excellent and affordable compilation of his most important economic writings (I assign it in my history of economic thought courses). My favorite pairing ever was a reading group with Why Not Socialism? (Cohen) and Why Not Capitalism? (Brennan).
Of course, if he is willing to provide the funds, I'd be happy to have @khrachvik choose whatever selections he wants from Marx as long as I get to choose the contrasting readings. Preferably, he could pay to bring in a Marxist academic to serve as the discussion leader.
Let's put these ideas side by side by giving each a fair presentation.
“Each monarch keeps ready all the armies he would have if his peoples were in danger of being exterminated; and this state in which all strain against all is called peace. (…) The consequence of such a duration is the permanent increase in taxes; and that which prevents all remedies in the future is that one no longer counts on the revenues, but makes war with one’s capital.” - Montesquieu
"If the concept of state is based on a monopoly over rulership prerogatives and the use of force in society, States will be among the most predatory institutions in human societies." - Vincent Ostrom
Montesquieu on taxation:
“One must not take from the real needs of the people for the imaginary needs of the state.”
“There is nothing that wisdom and prudence should regulate more than the portion taken away from the subjects and the portion left to them.”
"Democratic decision making is a means for finding and implementing the will of the majority; it has no other function. It serves, not to encourage diversity, but to prevent it." - David Friedman
Ordinary majority rule is not a reliable way to define legitimate ends. It systematically enables coalitions to impose costs on minorities (fiscal commons, discriminatory regulation, expropriation). That is why public choice distinguishes constitutional choice from ordinary politics: the rules that define what is off-limits for a simple majority must themselves be chosen under a higher threshold of agreement—ideally approaching Wicksellian unanimity or near-unanimity—so that the basic constraints command broader consent.
The relevant democratic question is therefore not “what goals does the current majority prefer?” but “what constitutional rules would free and responsible individuals agree to in a constitutional moment, knowing they cannot predict their future position?” Economists’ proper role is to analyze the working properties of alternative rules and to propose institutional changes that expand the domain of mutual gains, not to subordinate economic reasoning to whatever majoritarian preferences happen to prevail at a given moment.
AI referee recommendations have ramped up the volume and variety of review requests I receive. Ironically, I’m spending less time on them now—the papers are a better match for my expertise.
You can ignore the warnings of economists, but you can’t avoid the consequences of ignoring economics:
davehebertecon.substack.com/…
Daniel J. Smith retweeted
Your periodic reminder that the sticker was invented in 1935 but the US Postal Service didn’t make self-adhesive stamps available nationwide until 1992.
US FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traffic control by 2028 reut.rs/4zsSsu2
