公告板

周其仁：货币似蜜，最后还是水

周其仁：“货币似水说”的重心在总量，在价格总水平；“货币似蜜说”更关注过程中相对价格改变的影响。不过，也不宜把两说的分歧看得太大。毕竟，弗老领军的货币主义与哈耶克坚守的奥地利学派，有一个共同的出发点，那就是对“法定不可兑现货币”制度，抱有一种理性的怀疑。结合中国经济2004年以来惊心动魄的起伏，先是“结构性过热”从钢铁、水泥、电解铝漫游到众多投资部门，然后是房地产、股市的历史性的上冲与下跌，再到物价总水平的陡起陡落，我们或许可以把把两说合并：货币进入市场，受黏性支配改变相对价格，然后推高物价总水平。是的，货币似蜜，最后还是带黏性之水 （见这里）。

Samuelson vs. Friedman

David Henderson: The young interviewer owes a huge debt to Milton Friedman, who did more for him and for every healthy American male under age 54 than Samuelson ever did. I’m referring, of course, to Friedman’s “nutty libertarian” crusade against the draft. Meanwhile where was Samuelson? He was AWOL….In 1980, when Senator Sam Nunn was trying to bring back the draft and I circulated an economists’ statement against the draft, Samuelson refused to sign. Friedman, by contrast, not only served on President Nixon’s Commission on the All-Volunteer Force but also lobbied Congressmen personally against the draft. See here.

Conservatism & the University Curriculum

Peter Berkowitz from Hoover Institution: But most students will hear next to nothing about the conservative tradition in American politics that stretches from John Adams to Theodore Roosevelt to William F. Buckley Jr. to Milton Friedman to Ronald Reagan. This tradition emphasizes moral and intellectual excellence, worries that democratic practices and egalitarian norms will threaten individual liberty, attends to the claims of religion and the role it can play in educating citizens for liberty, and provides both a vigorous defense of free-market capitalism and a powerful critique of capitalism’s relentless overturning of established ways. See here.

李子旸：凯恩斯主义的宿命

李子旸：里根著名的一句话是：政府不能解决问题，政府才是问题本身。可惜的是，里根对政府这个问题解决得并不好。他卸任时，美国联邦政府的财政赤字达到空前的规模。政府规模根本没有缩小。如果这些抱持限制政府观点的政治家们在控制政府规模上都一筹莫展，那么，完全可以想象，那些本来就主张大政府的家伙们执政后，会有一个什么样的政府。为什么会这样？这是因为，控制政府规模，这是一件非常、非常难的事情，是几乎不可能完成的任务。对此，生动的教材是一部英国的政治讽刺喜剧《是，大臣》（Yes, Minister）。该片有中译。建议所有想要了解公务人员行为模式的人都去看看这部电视片。凯恩斯主义者拒绝为他们的主张被长期应用负责。他们说那不是他们的本意。但凯恩斯主义的宿命就是，这种政策必定会被长期应用，并会逐渐扩展，一直走到他们自己的反面，导致他们努力想要避免的结局，甚至更糟（见这里）。

The ‘Unseen’ Deserve Empathy, Too

John Hasnas: Calling on judges to be compassionate or empathetic is in effect to ask them to undo this balance and favor the seen over the unseen. Paraphrasing Bastiat, if the difference between the bad judge and the good judge is that the bad judge focuses on the visible effects of his or her decisions while the good judge takes into account both the effects that can be seen and those that are unseen, then the compassionate, empathetic judge is very likely to be a bad judge. For this reason, let us hope that Judge Sotomayor proves to be a disappointment to her sponsor. See here. (HT: TOTM)