Econlib
econlib.org · Group blog · on HN since 2007
Econlib is a free-market economics site from the Liberty Fund, hosting essays, a library of classic texts, and a podcast.
What HN saysCommenters link it for Hayek's essay on prices and knowledge, Great Depression policy analysis, and a podcast one says doesn't push its host's libertarianism.
411HN people shared it
294linked it in comments
245stories submitted
2.0Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1I, Pencil (1958)39 people · 333 points · first shared 2008 · 131 comments on HN
- 2Economy is first a knowledge problem17 people · 8 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 3What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen14 people · 3 points · first shared 2007 · discussion on HN
- 4RentControl13 people · first shared 2012
- 5The Ideological Turing Test (2011)9 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 6Negative Income Tax6 people · 9 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 7They Clapped: Can Price-Gouging Laws Prohibit Scarcity?6 people · 6 points · first shared 2012 · 2 comments on HN
- 8Comparative Advantage6 people · 4 points · first shared 2009 · 1 comments on HN
- 9Rent Seeking6 people · 4 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 10Why Does the Fed Oppose Narrow Banking?6 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 11Hsieh-Moretti on Housing Regulation: A Gracious Admission of Error – Econlib5 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 12The Use of Knowledge in Society5 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 13An answer to a5 people · first shared 2021
- 14IndustrialRevolutionandtheStandardofLiving4 people · first shared 2012
- 15Bryan Caplan: Our Homeschooling Odyssey3 people · 29 points · first shared 2021 · 7 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
refurb · 2020-04-14
Back in 2007 I listen to Econlib podcast quite a lot. The host had some really great guests on and did a very nice job in digging into the issues.
https://www.econlib.org/
Yes, the host is a libertarian, but I don’t think he forces it on his listeners. He’ll often have people on who aren’t anything close to libertarian. He’s also quite upfront about his own biases.
I learned a ton from that podcast.
sophrosyne42 · 2025-12-04
Yeah. Also, software written for a wide gamut of hardware configs, even those under the same CPU ISA, will always be slower than software written for a unique hardware stack and only shipped for that hardware. Does it follow that all software should be written for specific hardware? I think not, because the performance overhead you take on allows saving on massive economic costs. It just isn't realistic to use development resources in that way. Even if devs are better at making ports for their games than fex, that takes precious time and money away from making the game, adding features, polishing, etc. It is much more realistic and sensible to focus on the comparative advantage than the absolute advantage [1].
[1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadvantage.ht…
dade_ · 2024-08-27
There is strong evidence that attempts to fix the depression actually made it worse and prolonged it. One take of many: https://www.econlib.org/policy-failure-during-the-great-depression/
adolph · 2024-07-06
you self-censor as a result, the rest of us lose your perspective, and the development of further ideas is stifled.
This component of privacy reminds me of “Preference Falsification,” a phenomenon described by Taimur Kuran. Although Kuran’s examples are often of Eastern Europe, this essay puts it in terms of US politics of 50 years ago.
https://www.econlib.org/how-timur-kuran-changed-my-thinking/
Important paper to recommend as always, Soloave’s “ 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy” written after the article but by a thinker who is cited in it.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
And also “Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2203713
retwertett · 2024-02-03
Really interesting discussion guys. I recommend this short essay by F.A.Hayek on how prices are discovered. https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw.html
0xDEAFBEAD · 2023-12-08
>Perhaps there's some level of overconfidence at play from systems thinkers who overintellectualize their ability to conceptualize and extrapolate forward an impossibly complex system.
Actually this is more or less the point that Eliezer Yudkowsky makes in this essay about the need for caution in AI development:
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/03/so_far_unfriend.html (see especially points A/B/C/D)
I doubt overconfidence is a problem specific to effective altruism. In any case, any good machine learning engineer knows that a dataset with only a single data point is essentially worthless -- even if we grant the premise that the board took the wrong action given the information they had available to them at the time.
ianai · 2023-11-10
eru · 2023-09-11
Still the old myth of a 'Housing Bubbble'. I guess that one won't die?
There was a housing slump, but no housing bubble.
See eg https://www.econlib.org/kevin-erdmann-was-right/ and https://www.econlib.org/archives/2018/06/kevin_erdmann_o_1.html and follow the link to eg https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/erdmann_-_mop_-_housing_was_unde…
You can also see https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-01-10/there-was-no-hou… but it's behind a paywall.
abecedarius · 2023-06-25
This is a common belief with terrible support and a good case against it. https://www.econlib.org/caplan-callard-the-case-against-education-at-u… (I can recommend the book.)
mellavora · 2022-11-10
> The US has uniquely good protections against abuse by government officials.
I hear even civil forfeiture is in decline.
Though too many cases still end by plea bargain. Which has interesting parallels to torture
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4154&a… from 1978.
With others arguing that plea bargain is coerced confession, and some legal scholars even thinking thoughtful torture would be better
https://www.econlib.org/how-thoughtful-torture-beats-plea-bargaining/
I love the US, and part of that love is to help it see its weaknesses and injustices so we can fix them.
georgewsinger · 2021-12-28
I highly second this. Though if I were to critique Bryan's book, it would be to question whether he followed his own advice: https://www.econlib.org/our-homeschooling-odyssey/.
You could argue that Bryan wrote a very persuasive book on why effortful parenting is a waste of time, and then proceeded to engage in a parenting campaign which put him in the top 0.0001% of "parental effort exerted"! To what extent does that mean he doesn't really believe what he wrote?
I don't mean this to be a mean spirited question. I still think Bryan is an extremely persuasive , good faith author. Just wondering aloud how to explain this discrepancy.
CryptoPunk · 2021-08-18
Investing in housing is GOOD for society, because housing is not a scarce resource - the more is invested the more is built. It's precisely those places that have put up the most barriers to investing and building housing that have seen the greatest deterioration in housing affordability:
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388
Beware of the anti-profit bias:
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/08/04/we-have-an-ingrained-anti-profit-…
dcolkitt · 2021-06-03
This post has a fatal misconception that school teaches people to "learn how to learn". In your specific argument, it's the belief that forcing kids to master boring material will augment their ability to learn boring material in adulthood.
Cognitive psychology has consistently refuted this theory again and again. Transfer of learning is virtually non-existent.[1] When a student learns a topic he learns the very specific skills related to that topic. There's no spillover or improvement to the ability to learn other, even closely related, topics.
[1]https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/08/low_transfer_of.html
savanaly · 2021-04-29
I agree. Love Cowen, thought this article was very meh. Seems like it's always his weakest stuff showing up on HN :/
A better critical take on the capital gains issue is Scott Sumner's short and succinct one: https://www.econlib.org/capital-gains-nonsense/
logicprog · 2020-05-17
Don't know if you'll consider these valid, but here are some critiques of the LVT and Georgism:
- https://mises.org/wire/murray-rothbard-and-henry-george
- https://mises.org/library/single-tax-economic-and-moral-implications
- https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/02/a_search-theore.html
The best criticism I've found, however, is here: https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/Critique%20of%20Georgism.htm. It's from a more mainstream economist POV (I think?) than the other links and is far more fair and detailed.
Symmetry · 2020-03-20
Scott Sumner (an economist who specialized in the Great Depression) talks about bit more about Hoover versus FDR.
https://www.econlib.org/scott-alexander-on-herbert-hoover/
icebraining · 2019-08-30
I recommend his interviews on Econtalk: https://www.econlib.org/econtalk-by-featured-guest-and-letter/?selecte…
He has a really good rapport with the host (Russ Roberts) and it seems to tamper down his tendency to rant against the stupidity of others.
dpatru · 2019-08-08
As a counterpoint, consider this quote from an article [1] by economist Robert Murphy: "In the climate change debate, people often forget that under all but the most catastrophic scenarios, the future generations who will benefit from our current mitigation efforts will be much richer than we are. For example, Nigel Lawson points out that even under one of the worst case scenarios studied by the IPCC, failure to act would simply mean that people in the developing world would be “only” 8.5 times as wealthy a century from now, compared to 9.5 times as wealthy if there were no climate change. [2]"
[1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Murphyclimate.html
[2] Nigel Lawson, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming (New York: Duckworth Overlook, 2008), p. 36.
jacobush · 2019-04-26
Now, the USD is the most trustworthy fiat currency on the planet, but it's a little (ironic? don't know) interesting the USD in turn is also a scheme of sorts. Albeit with a very powerful guarantor. But as others have said here, the banks don't hold funds for all their accounts. If each Tether was backed not only by funds in a bank, but actual funds at the Fed, that would be a true 1:1 backing.
https://www.econlib.org/who-should-be-allowed-to-deposit-money-at-the-…
jseliger · 2019-03-04
Chicago likely has harsh zoning laws that raise the cost of housing and also imposes steep taxes for not-great public services (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/study-illinois-home-to-highest-overall-… Should it be any surprise that the middle class is moving to Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, and Florida?
Perhaps we ought to lower the cost of living (https://www.econlib.org/yimby/) in Chicago, along with other cities like New York and Boston.
UncleEntity · 2018-01-20
Pretty much the whole of human activity is spent on managing scarce resources in one way or another. Most things that have reduced this "burden" have been to the betterment of society (on the whole, of course there have been local winners and losers) so there is no reason to believe that some new form of scarcity reductions will not also follow this trend.
I think the major flaw most people make in this area is assuming that the current situation is the optimal and any disruption is inherently bad -- e.g. gold has always been scarce so it must always be scarce. Bastiat talks about this phenomenon with his "that which is seen and that which is unseen" theory one could argue.
--edit--
Bastiat link -- http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
albertgoeswoof · 2017-11-06
That makes sense, but you have to draw a line somewhere - you can't possibly know everything from the ground up. You'd have to start with particle physics, atoms, molecules, to even get to the basis of electricity - it's impossible for one person to know all of this.
I would recommend reading "I, Pencil" http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html to help put your mind at ease.
bufordsharkley · 2017-10-18
It's no surprise that we're seeing more and more anxiety coalesce around land: this is the classical economic expectation of what would happen as automated output starts to outperform labor, and capital can be automatically produced. When this happens, scarce natural resources (such as location) increase in value. Henry George saw this nearly 140 years ago, with his "Fool's Paradise" thought experiment.[0]
As efficiency rises and rises, can the cost of living ever approach zero, or will the landlords (in their many forms) be able to extract what they will? This is a very important question we need to answer.
[0] http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP15.html#III.V.13
solidsnack9000 · 2017-09-18
> In the end somebody got to pay the artists both for the production costs and for making a living on top of them.
"...they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN4.html#I.10.6
lr4444lr · 2017-05-01
http://econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/invisiblehand.html
Every individual... neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
csours · 2016-10-02
This reminds me of I, Pencil [1], the story of how a pencil is made. There should be an I, Ethically Sourced Pencil follow up.
1. http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
dragonwriter · 2016-06-22
> One reason is that the term is exclusively used by the ideological opponents of this "neoliberalism",
No, its not. Its used by defenders of neoliberalism quite a bit.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2010/Sumnerneoliberalism.html
https://cambridgedevelopmentstudies.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/in-defens…
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=31603
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=945
> A lot of people describe themselves as libertarians of various types, or even as classical liberals, but I've never met a person calling herself a neoliberal.
Which says a lot more about who you do (and don't) know than it says about anything else.
dimino · 2016-04-27
Congrats, but I'm always blown away at the size of some companies. Do you really need 2000 people to make yogurt?
Airplanes are big complex systems, so I get that, but yogurt?
Edit: Apparently I rubbed some folks the wrong way. I didn't mean to think I could do better, I just meant it's a wild thought that something so "simple" as yogurt could require so many people to make.
You guys probably know about "I, Pencil", but it's a good read if you haven't heard of it: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
nickff · 2015-10-11
The author here is essentially describing the classic 'seen vs unseen' problem which Bastiat outlined in his 1850 essay titled "What is Seen and What is Not Seen".[1][2]
[1] http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window#CITEREFBast…
timtas · 2015-08-17
I recently read "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt [1], and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a foundational understanding of economics. "One Lesson" is meant as a claim that the book is pure "signal." And it is.
Even more terse and incisive is the 150 year old essay that inspired Hazlitt to write his book, Frédéric Bastiat's "What is Seen and What is Not Seen." [2] It's uncanny how well this essay holds up today.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson
[2] http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html