The best post I’ve read today is Bernard Salanié’s “L’inflation chez les nobles sauvages” , on the dynamics of a particular business relationship between Captain Cook’s sailors and the female population of Tahiti, around 1770.
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New life for sale on eBay
This is the final proof that markets function everywhere and in everything. I have blogged before about auctioning favourite restaurant meals and about the free market for beers, but this Aussie beats all that: he sells you a new life (well, obviously his life- the only one he can auction- with all its current advantages and drawbacks, though he concedes that some ‘inherited’ features can be altered in the future, such as the fact that you’d have to start as vegetarian…).
→ Read more On Dutch coffeeshops and the war on drugs
Since I recently blogged about libertarianism, the Netherlands is in some respects (however, mind you: NL is far from being a pure ‘laissez faire’ country in general) a champion in succesfully implementing libertarian policies.
→ Read more Can we just scale up Denmark?
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My short answer: no.
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My longer answer: no, the success of the DK extensive welfare policies is to a large extent possible given the character of the Danes and therefore they’d most likely not work anywhere else.
Becker and Posner on ‘Libertarian Paternalism’
I have just read a wonderful critique of ‘libertarian paternalism’ by Gary Becker, complemented very nicely by Richard Posner. Some excerpts from both texts below (which also attempt a summary of the main arguments):
The term is indeed an oxymoron.
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