I'm Thankful...

That the most vile time of American life is about to end; for a while. There are only 7 left in the national pissing contest we Americans call a Presidential election. Thankfully the 2010 election cycle doesn't begin until February 2009, so we have a few months off! Every day seems to bring some piece of news about the race that is absolutely sickening. (Just go to Drudge Report at any random time and look around.) What confuses me to no end is that people for some reason expect the process to be civil and polite. Politics is a blood sport. It is a zero sum game where to the victor go the spoils and the loser is left in the cold. Given those conditions, why politics should be anything more than a dog fight (insert your own Michael Vick joke here) is beyond me.

As for who wins, I could care less. I will not be voting and may never vote again. I fully second Don Boudreaux's reasons for not voting. To them I would add my own ignorance. Every time I learn something, I realize how much I don't know, and this semester has convinced that there is a lot I don't know! Whenever most topics are being discussed I remind myself that unless I know enough to make an informed and thorough analysis of the topic, I tread lightly with my comments lest I increase the world's supply of nonsense via my ignorance. I take the same approach to voting. Given how little I know about practically every topic on the public agenda, how can I make an informed decision about a candidate who doesn't understand very much about any given topic either?

(By the way, I don't care what Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin or any other candidate for any office says, given the grand totality of human knowledge, not to mention the things we don't know yet, the candidates, just like me, know practically NOTHING!)

In addition, I'm convinced that many people shouldn't vote (pick a college student at random) and I like to lead by example.

The one reform that might get me to vote again is a "None of the Above" option for each and every political race. It would be great fun to see "None of the Above" get more votes than any candidate. The candidate with the highest number of votes would still win the office, but I can't help but think they would tread a little lighter once in office given that "no one" got more votes than they did.

The Financial Situation

Here is a list of insightful commentaries.

Peter Bernstein asks what I think is the best question in all of this: If the government is going to limit the losses of risk taking, why would anyone take less risk in the future?

NIMBY: Priceless Edition

This maybe the greatest, most absurd example of NIMBY I have ever seen.

T. Boone Pickens, of the famous Pickens Plan to increase the capture of wind energy in the United States, was interviewed by Fast Company Magazine. After outlining his project, Pickens was asked the following:

And you'll do all of this on your beautiful 68,000 acre ranch?

To which he responded:

I'm not going to have the windmills on my ranch. They're ugly.

Russian Farms, Football, and Grad School

• Here is a piece on the transition of Russian agriculture from collectively owned to large agricultural companies with the specter of a Russian government takeover.
• Being at a larger university for the first time, I've seen first hand how seriously many (if not most) people in town take the football team. Win or lose, it doesn't bother me.
• "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." -Ben Franklin
• "Late to bed and early to rise makes a man a grad student." -Matt
• Since coming back to grad school, I've also learned that caffeine is your friend!

NIMBY: Wind Turbine Edition

Some people don't want wind turbines disrupting their scenery. OK, fair enough. It comes down to a question of property rights. If you own the property where the proposed wind turbines would be built, then you have every right to stop them if you don't want them there. If you don't own the property, sorry but your scenery may now include wind turbines.

If the offended land owners valued the pristine view more than the developer valued the land as a site for wind turbines, then they should pool their money and out bid the developer, acquire the land and keep in its current state.

But the developer has more money. Why should he who has the most money always get what he wants?

Excellent question. Let me try to answer that with an example. I would like to have a new truck, a 50 inch flat screen TV, more books, and steak for dinner every night. Why don't I have all of these things? My budget constraint. All of that stuff would be cool, but my budget only allows me to buy so much stuff. My ability to pay for these goods is not high enough for the current owners of these goods to voluntarily trade with me. I still value this stuff, I just can't acquire everything that I value. Someone with more money, or different priorities, will acquire the stuff that I want. Such is life in a world of unlimited wants and limited means to acquire such wants.

If you own something, then you can control its use. If you don't own it, you can seek to control something's use by coming to a voluntary agreement with its current owners to purchase the asset or change its usage, or you attempt to control it through the political system, that is via coercion. It is when the latter happens that NIMBY becomes a problem.

Updates

If you check my profile, you will see that I am no longer an Ag Economics instructor. I am now in a PhD program in Applied Economics.

In terms of posting, one of two things could happen.

1. I will be extremely busy, leaving little time for blogging.
2. I will be thinking about economics 24/7 for the next 4 years. Thus I will think of plenty of blog topics and begin to see even more of the world in an economic context. So even though my time will become more scarce, I will blog more.

I'm not sure which will occur, but I will at least check in from time to time.

Stossel on Stop Signs

Do fewer stop signs reduce the number accidents? John Stossel has a great column. He also touches on how traffic tickets can quickly turn into a money making scheme for both cities and police officers.