Comments on: Freedom at work

By: dsquared

dsquared — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:54:00 +0000

a basic economic principle is that "supply derives its own demand"

That would be the vulgar version of Say's Law, which is pretty much on life support since the vicious kicking Keynes gave it in the 1930s.

The proposition that if people work less, they have less "output" to consume is pretty self-evidently true, apart from soldiers and other people whose job is the destruction of expensive and/or useful things. But conversely, they have more leisure.

By: Oli

Oli — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:30:00 +0000

Um, I think you are the ones who have no understanding of economics, a basic economic principle is that "supply derives its own demand" therefore limiting supply e.g by limiting th amount of work each member of the population can do will also limit demand and therefore lead to a fall in real output i.e less wealth for the population. Also Madsen is going to be the first private British astronaut. How cool is that?

By: Mat

Mat — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:34:00 +0000

The french economy does have some problems at the moment… but they will not be solved by the recommendations of the twits that "explain everything at the level of the opening pages of an Introductory Economics textbook" as… Simon says. They really didn’t get past those first pages, too boring I guess…. "asymmetries of information? Bah."

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 09:35:00 +0000

Having free time and/or not being driven by a desire to consume = a bad society is an assumption made in this amazing Newsmax article.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/9/5/221246.shtml

Simply put – people in Cuba are too comfortable. They need the freedom to be afraid of falling into the gutter to drive a succesful economy.

By: European Loser

European Loser — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 09:28:00 +0000

The trick is to first decide everything bad is the fault of government, then work back from that point (see the the funniest ASI post ever for more details).

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 09:05:00 +0000

I do like the way the ASI explains everything at the level of the opening pages of an Introductory Economics textbook, presumably because that's the most advanced level they understand.

"More horses means more demand for horseshoes, and that means more work for blacksmiths." Gee, thanks, Dr Maden Pirie! Your PhD sure wasn't a waste of effort!