Speaking on Job Creation

Perhaps you can start off with Pete Boettke's play-doh example in regards to how capital and labor markets work.

Figure out a way for people in their 60's, 70's, and 80's to carry their own weight. They need not carry several people as they did in their 40's and 50's. But if they carried their own weight, a lot of "problems" would be solved.

This is more nicely formatted at Do Smart People Run The Market?. I was inspired by the post by Shikha Dalmia on EconLog.

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Academics and politicians routinely pose a question: Do you want us to provide rational, insightful, far-seeing management of your life and resources, or do you want to leave this to the unregulated, unplanned, hit-or-miss results of the market? They are smug in their belief that there is only one smart answer, that rational planning has to beat random action every time.

Of course, they spin the question to get their desired answer. The better question is: which do you choose as the primary way of solving the problems of life and offering you methods and choices?

Government

Empower 100,000 academics, lawyers, and politicians with half of what you produce, and entrust them to find great solutions. They deserve this power because....

[Long quote from http://easyopinions.blogspot.com/2010/02/do-smart-people-run-market.html elided. Please do not repost to EconLog the entirety of material you've posted elsewhere. A link and excerpt is sufficient. Thanks!--Econlib Ed.]

I suggest Russ Roberts comment "Ungovernable" http://cafehayek.com/2010/02/ungovernable.html. We could create a lot of private sector jobs by getting government out of things they're not good at. The small challenge there is to argue firing 10 government employees and replacing them with 5 private ones is a net gain. But you have until Tuesday to solve that.

The economy depends on disagreement over values. You trade something worth less to you than the other guy for something worth less to him than you, and the standard of living of the nation increases by the amount of the disagreement. Add that up over all voluntary transactions.

Disagreement works entirely in the cracks.

One size fits all policies kill it off completely.

rhhardin writes:
The economy depends on disagreement over values.

Seems a bit misleading to put it that way. More like "the economy depends on there being at least two values for each thing." That way, there's no implication that one or the other of two parties are wrong. Minor nit, perhaps, but this two-value-ness leads to, among other things, the existence of money and cities.