Conor Friedersdorf laments this country’s bevy of pointless alcohol laws: “But it offends my notion of the freedom due every man and woman that I cannot sip a single cold beer or craft cocktail as I walk down the beach with my girlfriend, enjoying the West Coast sunset.”
Speaking of which, the AP has picked up on the debate over Washington’s privatization initiatives:
Opponents argue that I-1100 goes too far by eliminating the three-tier system — producers, distributors and retailers — basically allowing Costco to cut out the middle man distributor.
“It destroys the entire system,” said Craig Wolf, president and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, which is opposed to I-1100 but has taken no stand on the competing Initiative 1105, which keeps the tier system in place. [...]
National wholesaler and liquor distributor groups are closely watching the outcome of the campaign, with some saying that it could be the first step for Costco to try and change the system in other states.
Yes, let us hope so! [Via Tom Wark.]
People seem to be making too much of Bjorn Lomborg’s “reversal” on climate change. While the Copenhagen Consensus’s recommended expenditure is larger than before, his position in favor of research and mitigation instead of immediate, massive carbon reductions is nothing new. (His previous book, Cool It, recommended a $2/ton carbon tax and a $25 billion per year expenditure on alternative energy R&D.)
Are publishers still useful for authors? Paul Carr argues that they are.
Video of the day: Reason.tv on Weed, Wheat, and ObamaCare. A good summary of how interpretation of the Commerce Clause has evolved.
The Wall Street Journal profiles GMU economist Peter Boettke, “the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics.”
The woman gracing the cover of Vampire Weekend’s “Contra” is none too happy with her appearance there.
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Adam Ozimek makes a strong case for why liberals should be skeptical of occupational licensing.
This essay made me miss my barista days, describing perfectly those early morning hours listening to good music and prepping the shop, and taking the morning subways with the workers who get the city ready for later-rising professionals:
On the streets, and in the subway station, there are only a few other people around. As I see it, there is an unspoken code. Some kind of mutual 5 a.m. understanding: we are invisible. There is no eye contact, no acknowledgment of one other. Some of the subway riders are still out from the night before, and some are heading off to work (mostly fast food and construction jobs, some nurses). You can tell the difference by their fresh-from-the-shower wet hair versus just-partied sweaty hair, and sad eyes longing to get back into bed versus expectant eyes longing to get into bed.
In Virginia, two bartenders have been charged with felonies for doing fire tricks. It’s an absurd overreaction, but these tricks can go very, very wrong.
This Freakonomics profile of Randal O’Toole is specifically about rail transit, but this point about cognitive bias has more general application:
So why would rail lovers at home be rail detractors at work? O’Toole’s reasoning: “I don’t expect taxpayers to subsidize these preferences any more than if I liked hot-air balloons or midget submarines.” [...]
Is supporting policies that go completely counter to one’s own personal preferences to be admired or abhorred? Some might find it eccentric, and it certainly is a minority trait. My experience has been that most people in this world assume that others share their likes, and if they don’t, they will do so with just a little persuasion. In some cases this may be true. But regardless, this is certainly a convenient outlook because it means there is a happy coincidence: the best path to doing selfless good for others just happens to be promoting public policies that cater to one’s own self-interest.
One virtue of economics is that it encourages one to see markets as a discovery process for revealing people’s actual preferences, rather than allowing one to assume that one’s own are superior are widely held.
Can we date? A handy flowchart.
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One downside of publishing a daily links post is that I can’t always give credit where credit is due. However there are a few sites that consistently provide fodder for morning links, and I’d like to acknowledge them here.
The Morning News — The inspiration for this site’s morning links, and they do it twice a day! Certainly one of the most diverse and interesting sites I peruse in my RSS reader.
ColdMud — Absolutely the site to go to for daily food news.
Marginal Revolution — Tyler Cowen has lately taken to posting daily links, and given his wide-ranging cultural interests and economic insight it’s no surprise that he links to so much intriguing material.
The Agitator — Radley Balko needs no introduction on this blog and his site is consistently a great source for daily updates.
The Stogie Guys — I don’t smoke frequently enough to make good use of their cigar reviews, but their Friday Samplers of tobacco-related news always provide something interesting.
BlURL — Lately I get just as many, if not more, useful links from Twitter as I do from RSS feeds and traditional news sites. However I can’t always follow Twitter throughout the day. BlURL handily provides a list of only tweets that include links to other sites, making it an incredibly useful service when I’m looking to round out the morning links.
What am I missing? What are the sites I should absolutely be checking every morning?
Update: I should include Google Reader too. The “shared items” link is one of the first I click when starting up my computer.
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I’ve been remiss in not linking yet to a couple of new sites from my friends.
First is Stimulus Watch, designed by my Crispy on the Outside co-blogger Jerry Brito. It’s a wiki site that lets citizens track stimulus spending proposals, vote on their importance, and supplement the descriptions with local knowledge. It’s searchable by location so you can find the proposals in your area. Oregon has 159 “shovel-ready” projects in the website, ranging from the plausibly appropriate to a $1.5 million dollar request for resurfacing tennis courts in Eugene.
The second is one of my new favorite blogs, Fr33 Agents by my friends Jason Talley and Tom Pearson. They profile libertarian activists and cover the “this movement like the fan boys and girls that we are.” Their daily updates are a great source for keeping up with grassroots opposition to big government interference in our lives. Go check them out.
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Though I’m not a coder, I’m always interested in what the guys at the 37 Signals blog have to say. A couple of their recent posts deal with their philosophies of employment. Here, this quote stands out for me:
I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that not all of us excel at the same things, but I’m coming to believe more and more firmly that this whole “typical person” entity is a myth. I’ve never met a typical person. There are only people who are passionate about what they do, and people who aren’t. When the latter become the former, they become “atypical”, because suddenly they are self-motivated, insightful, excited, optimistic, and happy.
Another entry explains the workplace experiments they’ve been running, including four day workweeks, funding the development of employees’ outside passions, and discretionary spending accounts.
Oddly enough, the posts remind me of what I miss about working full-time in coffee. Though the pay and the prestige are both lower than I what I enjoy now, the flexible hours, unrationed vacation days, and enthusiasm from management for their workers’ outside interests allowed much more room for personal growth. The passion for coffee that excites many of us baristi makes us more interesting people as a result. PR? Not so much.
My tamper grows dusty on the shelf. It longs to feel those 30 lbs. of pressure.
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Debi points my attention to the SnūzNLūz, an April Fools’ Day alarm clock from ThinkGeek:
The SnūzNLūz uses the very complex psychological phenomemon known as ‘HATRED’. Basically it’s human nature to wish harm upon your enemies. Similarly, it’s human nature not to give your enemies gobs of cash so that they can grow big and dominate the world with their totally wrong, stupid and invalid point of view. ThinkGeek realized that. That’s why everytime you hit the snooze button, the SnūzNLūz will donate a specified amount of your real money to a non-profit you hate. The problem of sleeping in is solved.
Sound familiar? I like the new wrinkle about donating money to a hated enemy instead of to a beloved charity or wasting it in a paper shredder, but I think I had them beat on this one.
And yes, I’d definitely buy one if it were a real product.
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