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.

Black Hole Stupidity

This has made it's way around the net, but it is just too stupid for me not to link to.

A Dallas county commissioners court meeting resulted in charges of racial insensitivity when one commissioner referred to "black holes."

Forget looking for intelligent life in outer space; it's hard enough to find it on Earth!

On Naming Stuff After People

It has begun. Waco came extremely close to naming an elementary school after Barack Obama.

I dislike the idea of naming stuff after people. If a new school is built, name it after the town or the street it's on. If a new highway or road is constructed, give it a number or name it after a tree. Naming stuff after people inevitably results in nonproductive tinkling contests. The only times I like the idea of naming something after someone is as a joke (such as "The Michael Vick Humane Society Annex") or as a back handed compliment (such as naming a park lot "The Joe Blow Memorial Parking Lot" before Joe Blow actually dies).

Would naming the new Waco elementary school "Barack Obama Elementary" versus "J.H. Hines Elementary School" actually improve educational quality?

Probably not.

Furious at the Gas Station

I often find myself spinning into a furious rage at gas stations and it has absolutely nothing to do with the price of gas. It is caused by other drivers, such as the way people park at the gas station, how they cut through the service bay as opposed to going around it, leaving their vehicle at the pump after they've filled their tank, etc. I cannot understand the rationale behind any of this. If you park square and in the designated spaces, then everyone can maneuver more efficiently. If you go around the service bay to enter or exit the station, you cut down on the potential for accidents. If you need to buy a soda after getting gas, pulling up to the store opens up a pump for someone else. The question is why doesn't anyone seem to do any of these things? Do gas stations not have an incentive to enforce some level of rules in their parking lots to facilitate their operation?

The only way I've found thus far to subdue my rage is to find the smallest area between two vehicles I can fit through and drive my truck through it. Usually someone is watching. Maybe eventually someone will come to the same conclusions I have and gas stations will become more pleasant places.