November 27, 2008
Singapore Gives Thanks
November 27, 2008
Thanksgiving Thoughts
November 27, 2008
Emperor, Clothes, etc.
November 27, 2008
Letter of Law, Spirit of Law
November 26, 2008
Different Forms of Government
November 26, 2008
Roderick Long and the Tiny Gnomes from Neptune
November 26, 2008
When You're in a Hole, Keep Digging
November 26, 2008
Singapore's Policy Secret: Economic Literacy, Deference, or Resignation?
November 26, 2008
Notes on McArdle's Law


Two Questions:
1) Why aren't there any reviews on Amazon yet?
2) When will the paperback come out?
I'm waiting for the audio edition read by the author.
Err, well, yes, I have "ordered" a copy but not in the actual paying sense, I have to admit.
I'm supposed to be reviewing it for one of the UK papers so I hope Bryan will accept the loss on one copy's royalties for the greater gain?
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We poor germans. The book isn't out yet at amazon.de.
1. I don't know. Who wants to write one?
2. 1-2 years, I think.
Here follows a post made on the VC Blog:
Governments as "institututed among men," are only part of the social order, and the functions and composition of governments are only part of the many and varied decisions required of those comprising the social order.
It has been pretty well established (and acknowledged by a Nobel Prize) that practically all decisions are made with incomplete (and often inadequate) information.
What Hayek (and others) have inferred is that, for their functions in a social order, actors seek and use as much information as they perceive necessary for the decisions (choices)they determine as affecting their individual conditions (which include many various relationships).
How much effort (time especially) individuals apply to seeking sources for information, evaluating it, and comparing conflicting information, is probably a function of perceived impact of the resulting decision on the individual's concern with the effects and results of the decision to be made.
The greater benefit for individuals in an open society seems to be to limit the functions of government so that those individual concerns, and the related importance to individuals of decisions are also limited.
To provide an substitute "expertise" that lubricates enlarging the limits on governmental functions, to increase the "efficiencies" of those processes, is contrary to the concept of an open society, and the decision processes within it.
There is not much "irrational" about that.
R. Richard Schweitzer
s24rrs@aol.com