Karlsson vs. Caplan

Zaujimavá výmena argumentov medzi Stefanom Karlssonom a Bryanom Caplanom na tému ekonomických cyklov a ich podnikateľského predvídania. Nie je to len o psychológii.

Magic Moments from ASC (5)

„The phenomenon of "Hollywood communists" is indeed striking....
.... First, actors had for centuries been condemned as belonging to one of the lowest social classes. Theatrical folk were kept separate from polite society. For instance, it is alleged that until well into the twentieth century, in many American cities, deceased actors could not legally be buried in church cemeteries.

Further, actors think of themselves as "avant-garde intellectuals," despite the fact that they rarely can boast of much in the way of scholarly training. Since the Left, especially in the United States, has long been successful in portraying itself as the progressive, enlightened opposition to the bigoted, priggish, witless members of the Right, actors gravitate toward the former.

Actors and playwrights are, above all, storytellers, interpreters of the human condition whose words and gestures evoke powerful emotions from their audiences. It is far easier to excite an audience with the stark drama of a poor workingman struggling to survive than it is to glory in the success of a brilliant industrialist.“

- Larry Sechrest: „The Anti-Capitalists: Barbarians at the Gate“

Nekúpite dom na Floride? Vydržte ešte

Ceny amerických domčekov sa zreálňujú. Vďaka ďalšiemu „stabilizujúcemu“ zásahu už nevidiaceho jastraba Bena sa budú ešte o niečo dlhšie.

Magic Moments from ASC (4)

„ ... Now it is true that I would shrink the state by more than would Mises, but we have the same broad objective. I mean a totally unregulated, laissez-faire economic system, one in which property rights are sacred, where profit-seeking is seen as a noble enterprise, where money is a symbol of honorable achievement — rather than being castigated as a sordid tool used only by those sadly devoid of humane qualities.“

„In terms of concretes, by capitalism I mean an economy with no progressive taxes, no central bank, no pure paper currency, no drug prohibition, no gun prohibition, no "affirmative action" employment mandates for any ethnic group, no government-run health care, no federal departments of education, energy, labor, homeland security, health and human services, no DEA, BATFE, SEC, EPA, FTC, FDA, no minimum legal wage rates, no price controls, no tariffs, no welfare — domestic or foreign, rural or urban, for the rich or the poor. You know, a free economy!“

- Larry Sechrest: „The Anti-Capitalists: Barbarians at the Gate“

Ako štát zvyšuje ceny bytov?

Napríklad aj takto.

Magic Moments from ASC (3)

„Media and lots of financial market economists have so many different excuses for what´s going on. ´Subprime lender, off-balanced sheet vehicles, securitization, hedge fund´s leverage, FED´s policy of low interest rates, unreasoning fear (quote from Financial Times), bad ethics, credit crunch doesn´t really exist – it is a myth, a savings glad, it´s just an evaporation of confidence, when we bring back the confidence everything will be allright´.

These kind of things we hear day after day. But these can´t be the actual reasons for the crisis because these are the symptoms that we see. We should adress a core issue. And for that we look at DeSoto´s book „Money, Credit, Economic Cycles“. Banks are not true financial intermediaries. They create deposits and loans out of nothing as we know. That´s what market participants miss. They look just on symptoms and not on critical issue.

...Liquidity is for them the answer to anything. It can´t be about liquidity, it is a sort of characteristic. We don´t think it can be necesserally quantifiable. Liquidity means how easily you can sell good or asset. It´s a relationshisp between money and asset. ...How can liquidity expansion happen? We´ve used an austrian framework for banks. The first look is on FED and what it is doing with monetary base. There were a huge expansion of credit in last ten years.“

- Jeffrey Cleveland: „Anatomy of Financial Crisis“

Magic moments from ASC (2)

„People think individualism is a jungle. But it is not when you have a private property. If you refuse to privilege a superior knowledge, privilege point of knowing about the world to majority who know´s all. We are placed on the same foot and individualism is possible if you have such a rules and institutions that these rules produce. Otherwise individualism is not possible. I mean individualism as a social relationship. Marx thought that individualism was not possible. He spoke about individualism as a sort of jungle. But it needs a set of institutions, where we interact with the same possibilities.“

„I´d studied Becker and there is the same distance between us and Becker as between Vienna and Chicago. Without Friedman there would not be a classical liberalism in last century. Wihout Hayek we would have no improvement of liberalism that we know. I can say that without Mises there were no Hayek. Hayek enriched Mises tradition. But there is a big distance between us and the Chicago school. I think of the different significance of the ABC theory and monetarism. Monetarism is expressed poverty if you confront it to the ABC. Intellectual base of the Chicago school is positivism. We are not positivists.“


- Lorenzo Infantino: „Hayek Speaks to Europe“

Magic Moments from ASC (1)

„ ... Fannie Mae was authorized to deal with mortgages of as much as sevenhundred thousand dollars up from 400 000 dollars previously. Now people stop back for a minute. The median home price in the USA is 200 000 dollars. Why do we have dragonic taxpayer subsidised companies facilitating purchases of homes with a mortgages three times as larger? Don´t we presume that buyers of those homes are not a low-income families? ... Why does Fannie Mae advertise during the Superbowl? They do not deal with consumers. If you´ve running a business, why would you advertise to consumers if that´s not even your customer base? Clerly because of generating political sympathy.“

- Martin Fridson: „A Chronicle of Limitless Failures of Government“

Conference Of The Year Is Coming

Just only two days remaining to Austrian Scholars Conference start. The event of the year is here. So many various topics been discussed confirm Austrians are growing.
If I have a chance to be there, I wouldn´t miss especially these lectures:

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"My Anarchist Anthology" Roderick Long (Auburn University)

"On the Nature of Human Rationality" Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Vienna, Austria)
"Immanent Politics, Participatory Democracy, and the Pursuit of Eudaimonia" Geoffrey
Allan Plauche (Louisiana State University)

"The Place of Austrian Economics in Entrepreneurship Research" Peter G. Klein,
(University of Missouri)

"Clash of the Titans: The Bastiat-Proudhon Debate on Credit and Interest." Roderick
Long (Auburn University)
"On Hayekian Triangles" William Barnett and Walter Block (Loyola University, New
Orleans)
"Time Preference and Investment Expenditure" Jorg Guido Hulsmann (University of
Angers)

"Anatomy of a Financial Crisis: The Crisis of 2007 through the Eyes of Financial Market
Economists" Jeffrey Cleveland (Los Angeles, CA) and Antero Atilla (Copenhagen,
Denmark)

"If Anarcho-Capitalism is So Good, Why Doesn't it Exist? Incentives versus Preferences
in Social Change" Edward Stringham (San Jose State University)
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Preliminary program schedule here. For people who can´t participate live webcasting is ready.
BTW, it seems Hans Hoppe works in „Bratislava suburb“.

Zákaz fajčenia a súkromné vlastníctvo

Ešte raz k zákazu fajčenia v reštauráciach a baroch, tentoraz prostredníctvom analýzy Jiřího Schwartza ml. a Matěja Šustra z Liberálního institutu:


„Vstoupíme-li do restaurace, lehce čichem a zrakem zjistíme, zda se v ní kouří. Pokud jsme s daným stavem ovzduší v podniku spokojeni, posadíme se a využijeme jeho služeb, čímž dochází ke konkludentnímu uzavření smlouvy mezi vlastníkem restaurace a hostem. V opačném případě z restaurace odejdeme. O to silněji výše uvedené platí v situaci, kdy je hospoda zřetelně označena jako „kuřácká“.

Podnikatel otevře novou restauraci a rozhodne se, že v ní hostům povolí kouřit. Aby nekuřákům usnadnil rozhodování, zda jeho službu využijí, či nikoli, vyvěsí na dveře hospody velkou ceduli s nápisem: „VAROVÁNÍ: Zde hosté smějí kouřit. Nekuřáci svým vstupem berou na vědomí, že budou vystaveni cigaretovému dýmu, a tudíž využívají našich služeb na vlastní nebezpečí a zodpovědnost!“ Nelze tedy tvrdit, že vlastník „kuřácké“ restaurace poškozuje nekuřákovo zdraví. Korektně lze hovořit nanejvýš o nekuřákově „sebepoškození“: újmu si způsobil sám svým dobrovolným rozhodnutím, že „kuřácký“ podnik navštíví a nabízenou službu využije.

U zaměstnanců jde ve své podstatě o zcela totožnou problematiku: uzavřením pracovní smlouvy, jejímž předmětem je práce v „kuřácké hospodě“, dávají souhlas s tím, že budou při obsluhování hostů vystaveni cigaretovému dýmu.

Je tedy majitel, jenž prohlásí svou hospodu za „kuřáckou“, původcem negativní externality? Není, protože na nikoho neuvaluje náklady bez jeho souhlasu. Prohlásí-li majitel svou hospodu za kuřáckou, nese plné důsledky svého rozhodnutí, neboť spotřebitele ani zájemce o práci nemůže nijak nutit k tomu, aby jeho služeb využili či aby přijali práci v jeho hospodě.

Kuřáci si podstatně více cení možnosti v hospodě kouřit, než nekuřáci oceňují nezakouřené středí. Kdyby tomu totiž bylo naopak, tedy nekuřáci by byli ochotni zaplatit více za „zcela čistý vzduch“ v hospodě než kuřáci za možnost si v hospodě zapálit, pak by drtivá většina hospod byla již nyní „nekuřáckých“ (včetně stavebně oddělených prostor pro kuřáky a nekuřáky), protože by se tu podnikatelům nabízela vysoce atraktivní zisková příležitost.“

Na čo je železničná polícia?

Napríklad na to, aby chytala ľudí predávajúcich hračky na stanici.