State control of the economy, maintaining the forms but not the substance of private property — isn’t that a definition of fascism?

I’ve been puzzled, by the way, at the argument that the Fifth Amendment allows takings only for ‘public use’. Seems to me the plain language of it restricts only such takings, leaving takings for private use wide open.

I’m likely to want to refer to this later:

One of his friends was contemplating becoming involved in a drug-distribution scheme, and telephoned Nguyen for advice. After a lengthy conversation, Nguyen advised the friend to stay away from the scheme, that it would only lead to trouble. The conversation was taped, and Nguyen was charged as a co-conspirator in a scheme to distribute drugs. Did you notice that? He advised against becoming involved in the scheme, but was still charged.

(Cited by Mary Lou Seymour)

I’ve heard that Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) started thinking about spontaneous order because of an incident in the Great War. Austrian forces were routed in a battle in Italy, and fled leaderless through the mountains; and far more of them got home safely than were expected to.

This says thousands of people at the WTC survived because they ignored advice from on high.

Reading an account of oral arguments in Ashcroft Gonzales v. Raich, a couple of months ago, gave me a sinking feeling: the Court was clearly hostile and the good guys were failing to make what I considered obvious points.

Guess what, folks, the Court’s flirtation with federalism was no more serious than you’d expect it to be in a body appointed by the Potomac Regime. (See also. The view hypothetically attributed to Scalia, a dissenter in Lawrence v. Texas, is explicitly echoed by O’Connor’s dissent in Raich.)

Once upon a time, probably 1983, I had an idea to maximize diversity in a representative assembly. You vote for more than one candidate. The ballots are counted once for each seat. On each count one winner is chosen, and if you voted for that winner your ballot is discarded. A few years later (in an article by Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Republic‘s special on the bicentennial of the present Constitution, 1987) I read about the Single Transferable Vote, a much more elegant idea: don’t throw out the winning ballots, discount them so that their aggregate value is lessened by the number of votes needed to win one seat.

Once upon an other time, namely 1993, asked how to build a straight road without eminent domain and without being held up for extortionate prices by opportunistic holdouts, I suggested buying options on land until the optioned parcels include a useful path; holdouts would see offers decline rather than rising. A few months ago I read (was it in The Freeman?) that this is standard practice for pipelines. (2017: But how straight does a pipeline need to be?)

And once upon yet another time, circa 1984–7, I proposed funding public goods by conditional donations: by contract, the donors arrange to pay a specified fraction of the budget if and only if enough others make similar arrangements. Now I learn from Mike Linksvayer that this concept has a name – assurance contracts – and an improvement by Alex Tabarrok, dominant assurance contracts.

. . Speaking of voting, I see that a voting reform bill has been introduced in Congress. It would restore the States’ discretion (denied since 1967) to elect Representatives by proportional representation in multimember districts; likely some states will do so to reduce the decennial hassle of gerrymandering. The bill also requires the States to run “instant runoff” elections for federal offices; though instant runoff is fairer than plurality election (even with a conventional runoff), it is also onerous, and I don’t think it’s within the authority of Congress to require it – and thereby forbid approval voting which I like better still, partly because it is much simpler to operate.

Some clown is using my address to spam everyone@amherst.edu with what appears to be an account of the bombing of Dresden. Why??

I’m sneezing up a storm today, and the good old allergy pill hasn’t helped. I do hope it’s not the same virus that afflicted my housemate for two weeks last month.

Who is the center of the movie universe? Kevin Bacon is not even in the top thousand. Rod Steiger has the lowest total path length. But would the result be different if actors were weighted by some measure of prominence (e.g. number of credits)?

It’s annoying to find a crank on our side. Rex Curry has for some time been documenting the sordid history of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, and bully for him; but lately he’s gone a bit nuts in his efforts to demonstrate that the Nazi swastika stands for Socialism, frequently citing sources that, like this, show the word Sieg or Sieg-rune (symbol of victory, appropriate to any flavor of statism) but not Sozialismus; and here he reads a scribbled Adolf as another S-rune (standing for Sozialist, since no other German word begins with S) despite the wiggly remnants of the original letters and the cross-stroke of the f. Rex, a few pieces of unambiguous evidence – which are probably somewhere in among the chaff – would be far more effective than this farrago.

I lived in Los Angeles for three years without ever knowing how to get to the Hollywood Sign. And speaking of views from on high, every time I fly to Chicago (come to think of it, the last time was quite a few years ago) I look for Fermilab, but I’ve never spotted a buffalo.

Aaron Krowne should stick to mathematics rather than writing absurdities like this:

The H1-B program has allowed companies hiring software engineers to pay less for more engineers by running to the government for help.

As if there were no migration in a state of nature! It would be more accurate to say that the Immigration Acts (in which you’ll find the H-1B program) allow skilled natives to get paid more by running to the government to restrict supply. This incidentally reduces the wages of similar workers in other countries, giving foreign employers a price advantage (to the extent that their products are able to enter the market).