The Simplest Tool for Improving Cities Is Also Free: from NYT. “As cities across the world open up, urban planners and architects — and the rest of us — are looking around, asking whether our streets and buildings will be, or should be, the same again. But whatever we decide, there’s one transformational tool for building the cities that’s right in front of us, calling for more sustained attention: the design of time. We can creatively reorganize our collective hours and days in ways that help more people enjoy our cities and institutions. Time might be our most valuable resource for building the environments we want.”
Atanu Dey on monopolies: “If there’s competition in a free market, monopolies don’t generally obtain. And even when monopolies do arise, it’s only temporary. In the long run, monopolies die — like the rest of us. That’s the law of nature, and also the law of the jungle we call the economy. Why? Because the universe is dynamic. Things don’t stay the same. Change is universal and unstoppable…In free markets, there are entrances and exits. Fortunes rise and fall. We just don’t know what the future will bring (if we did we’d make millions in the stock market) but we can be certain of one thing: tomorrows corporations will bring us better products at lower prices. It is fashionable among politicians and bureaucrats to push the false notion that monopolies are bad for people. The irony, oh the irony! Government is the biggest monopolist and it causes nearly all the harm that humans are forced to endure. Not just that it is the biggest monopolist, it is the most pernicious of monopolies because it is a monopoly in the use of violence.”
Pierre Lemieux: “We must remember that the usual way of speaking about “countries” importing or exporting is merely a linguistic shortcut. Individuals and firms are the ones that import or export, not countries. Countries or societies are collections of individuals, not super-organisms. All benefits accrue to individuals and all costs are paid by individuals.” [via CafeHayek]
