My Weekly Reading and Viewing for February 18, 2024

By Eric Boehm, Motive, February 16, 2024

Excerpt:

If there’s the thinnest little bit of a silver lining to be discovered within the premature demise of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition chief who reportedly died this week in jail, maybe it’s this: It’s a well-timed reminder of how a lot Russia sucks.

Most People most likely don’t want the reminder. In any case, Russia has been an authoritarian state for so long as any American alive at present can bear in mind, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s report of murdering political opponents, imprisoning critics, and silencing dissent is nicely established. Additionally, there’s that silly, damaging battle in Ukraine.

This week, nevertheless, the web has been handled to the absurd spectacle of former Fox Information pundit Tucker Carlson’s weird propaganda tour of Moscow (on the heels of his extra defensible determination to interview Putin). Through movies posted to X, previously Twitter, Carlson raved about the great thing about the Moscow subway system and was wowed by the beautiful expertise of…buying carts? By way of all of it, Carlson has repeatedly urged that perhaps Russia isn’t such unhealthy a spot, as if a scarcity of subway graffiti have been crucial metric for measuring the standard of a rustic.

My remark: It’s too unhealthy that Tucker didn’t appear to have seen any Greenback shops in Moscow. Certainly then, he would have seen by his personal hype.

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Ignorant U.S. Senator Scares the Bejesus out of Younger Youngsters

by Ben Christopher, Cal Issues, February 7, 2024. (HT2 co-blogger Scott Sumner)

Excerpt:

One other key element: Not like most up-to-date statewide legal guidelines aimed toward dashing up the approval of latest housing, the Los Angeles regulation doesn’t require builders to pay building employees heightened “prevailing wages” — roughly equal to what unionized building employees earn on a public infrastructure tasks. Muhammad Alameldin, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Terner Middle for Housing Innovation, stated that makes Government Directive 1 a form of alternate actuality for housing coverage in California.

Then comes the subsequent step. Most so-called “ED1 tasks” additionally make use of a hodgepodge of statewide “density bonus” legal guidelines that permit builders of 100% reasonably priced housing tasks to pack much more models and flooring onto a given lot than would in any other case be allowed beneath native zoning guidelines. These legal guidelines additionally let reasonably priced builders decide and select from a variety of goodies and freebies that reduce prices additional and permit for but denser growth. Which means no parking spots, restricted open house, smaller rooms and fewer bushes.

All these added models imply builders can set the rents decrease and nonetheless pay themselves again for the price of building after which some.

Remark: By “No Public Value” within the title, the writer means not “no value to the general public,” however “no value to taxpayers.” The individuals who purchase them will nonetheless pay a reasonably penny, but it surely’s price it to them.

by David Friedman, David Friedman’s Substack, February 13, 2024

Excerpt:

One drawback with Huemer’s argument is that the experience of the professional hardly ever covers sufficient of the difficulty to derive a conclusion on the idea of his personal information. A climatologist is aware of extra about local weather than I achieve this the professional consensus on what’s going to occur to world temperature, assuming I can determine what it’s, is a greater guess than I can produce for myself. However the climatologist has no experience in economics, which is likely one of the issues wanted to work out the results of that change — and I do. He most likely has little experience in statistics; I’m higher off determining for myself, with the help of info from statisticians,  whether or not to imagine Michael Mann’s hockey stick diagram. His experience in climatology tells him nothing in regards to the impact of CO2 focus on crop yields, a query it might not have occurred to him to consider. His conclusions in regards to the penalties of local weather change rely on various issues he isn’t an professional in. As soon as I’ve accepted his prediction of future local weather I’ve no cause to provide particular weight to his conclusions about its impact on human welfare or the price of lowering CO2 manufacturing, each of which the coverage conclusions that individuals argue about rely on, so there’s little cause to desire his conclusions to mine.

That’s one instance that I occurred to have checked out in appreciable element. The identical can be true of gun management, the place one of many foremost controversies (over hid carry) was set off by an article by two economists providing proof for an financial level I had made, years earlier than, in my Worth Concept. For the abortion controversy the problems are spiritual and ethical questions on which, as finest I can inform, there are not any specialists, at finest folks whose writing helps the reader assume by the difficulty for himself.