Đã đọc chưa?

những người theo đuổi chủ nghĩa bảo hộ có đọc đoạn dưới chưa?

đọc xong có nghĩ lại ko?

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from pages 140-141 of the 2015 Fourth Edition of Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin’s superb volume, Free Trade Under Fire:

Because exports increase the number of workers in relatively more-productive, high-wage industries, and imports reduce the number of workers in relatively less-productive, low-wage industries, the overall impact of trade in the United States is to raise average wages. Conversely, any policy that limits overall trade and reduces both exports and imports tends to increase employment in low-wage industries and reduce employment in high-wage industries. Restricting trade would shift American workers away from things that they produce relatively well (and hence export and early relatively high wages in producing) and towards things that they do not produce so well (and hence import and earn relatively low wages in producing) in comparison to other countries.

DBx: Indeed. And so when a protectionist (theo đuổi chủ nghĩa bảo hộ) or a proponent (ủng hộ, tán thành) of industrial policy (chính sách công nghiệp) tries to sell you on a scheme (kế hoạch) to use subsidies (trợ cấp) and protective tariffs (thuế bảo hộ) to enrich ordinary people, point that person to Doug’s book (now deservedly in its fifth edition). Ask that person if he or she has read it.

That question will end the conversation, for you can be sure that the (honest) answer is “no.” Peddlers of protectionism – past and present – almost never bother really to learn the case for free trade; they never study carefully the works of scholars such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Frédéric Bastiat, Richard Cobden, Henry George, Jacob Viner, Gottfried Haberler, Fritz Machlup, William Allen, Harry Johnson, Leland Yeager, Robert Mundell, Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya, Pierre Lemieux, Dan Griswold, Doug Irwin, Dan Ikenson, Scott Lincicome, and Johan Norberg. Instead, protectionists content themselves with their straw-man concoctions of the case for free trade. After all, straw men are so much easier to slay than are the real McCoys.

Bài trước: Nông cạn

Nông cạn

nhìn đời qua báo chí, thì cũng như nhìn (mỗi) bàn chân để đánh giá một người con gái đẹp thôi... :)

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 185 of the late Hans Rosling’s 2018 brilliant book, Factfulness:

Forming your worldview (thế giới quan) by relying on the media would be like forming your view about me by looking only at a picture of my foot. Sure, my foot is part of me, but it’s a pretty ugly  (xấu xí) part. I have better parts. My arms are unremarkable (không nổi bật, tầm thường) but quite fine. My face is OK. It isn’t that the picture of my foot is deliberately lying about me. But it isn’t showing you the whole of me.

DBx: The news media disproportionately (không tương xứng, không cân đối) focus on, and portray (vẽ chân dung, miêu tả sinh động), those events that vividly grab emotional attention. The news media enlarge that which is seen and amplify that which is heard. In doing so, the new media ignore that which is unseen and that which is silent, or even merely quiet.

Bài trước: Ghê quá

Ghê quá

ghê với khái niệm/ý nghĩ muốn có gì cũng free, ko phải bỏ sức cơ...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 33 of Deirdre McCloskey’s and Art Carden’s new (2020) book, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World (original emphasis; footnote deleted; link added):

Giving people what they want, and are in justice willing to pay for when they can, is a good system. “Economics,” writes Jeffrey Tucker, “is not just about making money. It’s also about a chance to be valuable to others, to yourself.” By contrast, giving people what the critics of “capitalism” think they should want, or that people do want but want to get magically (kỳ diệu, thần diệu) free of sacrifice of their own efforts (ko phải hy sinh, nỗ lực) for other people, burdening another person for their own gain, is a hideously (gớm ghiếc, đáng tởm) selfish (ích kỷ) society.

DBx: Yes. A trillion-and-two times yes.

All schemes of protectionism (bảo hộ) enable some people to leech (con đỉa; bóc lột, hút máu) off of their fellow citizens. Protectionism, in order to artificially (giả tạo, nhân tạo) enrich the few, denies to the many the right to spend their incomes as they choose. By artificially narrowing buyers’ options, protectionism relieves the protected of the obligation to make themselves as useful as possible to others.

This reality is true for run-of-the-(steel)-mill protectionism as well as for more ‘comprehensive’ versions hawked as “industrial policy.”

Bài trước: Ừa chỉ có vậy thôi

Eugene Fama đã nói gì?

Fed (ngân hàng trung ương mỹ) cũng chỉ có tác dụng giải trí như... phim khiêu dâm thôi, ko quyền lực quá đâu (bán nợ ngắn hạn, mua nợ dài hạn, hoặc ngược lại... chẳng hiệu ứng thật nào, các câu chuyện khác nhau về việc giá cổ phiếu lên xuống chẳng qua là viết đại ra sau khi thực tế xảy ra vậy thôi)

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Excellent interview with Eugene Fama. The usual stuff on efficient markets but also

It’s not just the Fed, around the globe central banks are flooding the system with liquidity like never before. Is this a reason for concern?

Frankly, I think this is just posturing. Actually, the central banks don’t do anything real. They are issuing one form of debt to buy another form of debt. If you are an old Modigliani–Miller person the way I am, you think that’s a neutral activity: You’re issuing short-term debt to buy long-term debt or vice-versa. That’s not something that should have any real effects.

Then again, the financial markets sure seem to love it. At least it looks like that the S&P 500 is moving upwards in tandem with the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet.

Every day we hear a story about the movement of stock prices. But the story is different each day. So basically, these stories are made up after the fact. But when we look at it systematically, we don’t see a big effect of Fed actions on real activity or on stock prices or on anything else. That’s why I use to say that the business of central banks is like pornography: In essence, it’s just entertainment and it doesn’t have any real effects.

I agree that people think the Fed is much more powerful than it is.

Bài trước: Dan Klein đã nói gì?

Ừa chỉ có vậy thôi

để có đổi mới sáng tạo thì nền kinh tế phải khuyến khích hoặc ít nhất tạo cơ hội cho "những kẻ bên ngoài", "những kẻ thách thức", "những kẻ phá bĩnh" tham gia, nói tóm lại phải để có cạnh tranh...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 295 of Matt Ridley’s excellent 2020 book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom:

Thus for innovation to flourish it is vital to have an economy that encourages or at least allows outsiders, challengers and disruptors to get a foothold. This means openness to competition, which historically is a surprisingly rare feature of most societies.

DBx: Distressingly (đáng buồn thay), even the most open and liberal societies are never free of harmful forces aiming to plan, bridle, and direct competition and innovation. Most such forces today in the United States fit under the innocent-sounding name “industrial policy.” Everyone who endorses such a policy as a means of improving the performance of the economy as a whole, or as a means of raising the living standards at least of middle- and lower-income people, presumes that which is impossible: successful soothsaying.

Economic growth of the sort that routinely raises the living standards of middle- and lower-income people requires genuine innovation. Genuine innovation, by its nature, is impossible to predict in any detail. We can predict that in an open, bourgeois, liberal society innovation will regularly occur. Yet no one can predict what the innovations will be, who will produce them, or how their effects will or ‘should’ ripple through the economy over space and time...

Bài trước: Tại sao chứ?

Tại sao chứ?

tại sao lại phớt lờ gulag và giận sôi lên với lợi nhuận của tập đoàn lớn...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 283 of Kristian Niemietz’s important 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies:

Why do we so easily dismiss (gạt bỏ, xua đuổi, bàn luận qua loa) the massive gains (lợi ích khổng lồ) that capitalism delivers and obsess over its shortcomings (khiếm khuyết)? Why are we so desperate for an alternative that we are prepared to give the most horrendous (kinh khủng, khủng khiếp) systems a free pass (at least for a while), provided they are not capitalist? Why are (or were) so many well-meaning observers willing to turn a blind eye (nhắm mắt làm ngơ) to Gulags and Laogai, but incandescent (nóng sáng) with rage (giận dữ, thịnh nộ) when large companies earn a profit, or when some people earn a lot more money than others?

DBx: Why indeed?

These questions are especially appropriate ones to ask on this 31st anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Bài trước: Chỉ là mưu đồ thôi

Đấu giá không như trong phim

xem trên phim, những người đấu giá cạnh tranh nhau, người sau có thể nâng giá cao hơn, người cuối cùng giá cao nhất, nhiều cảm xúc, đó là đấu giá kiểu anh,

đấu giá nghệ thuật, vì người bán dự rằng những người đấu giá bỏ giá khác xa nhau, nên áp dụng 'đấu giá kín' để người thắng cuộc ko biết mình bỏ giá cao quá,

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Dear Dan,

I recently attended my first art auction, but to my surprise it was nothing like in the movies—no raised paddles or emotional bidding wars. Instead, participants submitted private bids, and each lot went to the highest, with no chance for people to raise their bids. Why would an auction house use this method?

—Lisa 

What you witnessed was a “sealed-bid auction,” where each person submits a bid in advance and no one knows what other people are bidding. This is less exciting than an “English auction,” where participants bid against each other and the last person willing to raise their bid gets the item and pays for it. These are just two of the many possible auction formats, and new ones keep being invented. This year’s Nobel Prize in economics went to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson for their work on auctions.

Which auction format to use depends on the seller’s assumptions about how much buyers are willing to pay. If the seller expects the potential bidders to differ greatly in how much they will pay for an item, it’s advantageous to use a sealed-bid auction, since it keeps high bidders from discovering that they could have won the item for less. When potential bidders don’t know how much an item is potentially worth, an English auction will usually bring the highest price, because it allows bidders to establish the item’s value by learning from one another’s bids. As you discovered, the goal of the auction house isn’t to create the most exciting auction but to maximize sale prices.

Bài trước: Để học tiếng anh tốt

Chỉ là mưu đồ thôi

các lá thư của sherman cho thấy/tiết lộ rằng ông ta chỉ chú tâm bảo vệ quyền lợi của doanh nghiệp nhỏ và thiếu hiệu quả, chứ không phải là bảo vệ quyền lợi người tiêu dùng,

thật sự, chính sách chống độc quyền ngay từ đầu đã là mưu đồ để bóp nghẹt cạnh tranh,

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 275 of the late Werner Troesken’s 2002 Review of Austrian Economics article, “The Letters of John Sherman and the Origins of Antitrust“:

Sherman’s letters reveal that he was more concerned with protecting the interests of small and inefficient businesses than with protecting the interests of consumers.

DBx: Indeed. Antitrust policy was born as a scam to suppress competition in favor of politically influential producers (các nhà sản xuất có ảnh hưởng chính trị) and other rent-seekers (những kẻ tầm tô), it has always been used in this noxious (độc, hại) manner, and it continues to be such a scam.

Bài trước: Có một việc thôi

Dan Klein đã nói gì?

sự cuồng nộ, tuyên truyền, và phản ứng thái quá về chính sách đối với covid-19 chỉ là chiêu trò phá hoại nền kinh tế và đổ lỗi cho trump thôi,

qua tháng 11 là hết, về bình thường...

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Prediction: Covid Insanity (sự điên rồ) Will Decline (suy giảm) After the Election (sau bầu cử)

By Daniel B. Klein

Back in July I suggested that much of the Covid-policy hysteria (sự kích động, cuồng loạn), propaganda (tuyên truyền), and over-reaction (phản ứng thái quá) in the United States was a strategy – if only a subconscious (tiềm thức) strategy. By wrecking the economy (phá hoại nền kinh tế) and making people miserable (khiến người dân khổ sở), propagandists (tuyên truyền viên) and lockdowners (những kẻ ủng hộ "phong tỏa") would talk voters into blaming (đổ lỗi) President Trump and vote him out.

In September I doubled-down on the idea.

Now I’ll triple-down: I predict that—regardless of the outcome of the election—Covid-policy discourse (bài thuyết trình, diễn thuyết, diễn văn) in leftist media (truyền thông cánh tả) will change not long after the election. The Covid propaganda will start to fade away. It won’t happen over-night, but, I predict, that from, say, November 20 the insanity will begin to recede and that thinking and policy will start going back to normal. The main impetus of the propaganda and wreckage will have passed.

By December 1 we should be able to perceive whether such a trend had started from November 20. Let’s meet again on December 1 and see how my prediction has turned out!

Bài trước: Có một việc thôi

Có một việc thôi

có một việc để chính phủ làm thôi,

đừng can thiệp vào lựa chọn cá nhân của người dân, chấm dứt "phong tỏa"...

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Here’s a response to a recent comment by Thomas Hutchison:

Mr. Hutchison:

Commenting on a blog post in which I link to several essays that argue against covid-19 lockdowns, you write “All have good points, but all seem to fall short in not being specific enough about what to have done/to do instead.”

With respect, to oppose the lockdowns is to endorse leaving individuals free to choose their own levels of prevention (ngăn ngừa, ngăn chặn), both for themselves and their loved ones. Individuals differ in their risk preferences (ưa thích rủi ro), in their and their loved-ones’ vulnerabilities (dễ tổn thương), and in many other personal and family circumstances that require the making of trade-offs – trade-offs that will and should be made differently by differently situated people. Therefore, to criticize those who oppose government-imposed lockdowns for not specifying “what to have done/to do instead” is to miss the point entirely.

There is no one set of specific actions to be done. There is, instead, a range of different responses that is as wide and open-ended as is the vast range of differences among individuals. Or, put differently, there is one specific thing for government to do: get the hell out of the way of individual choice and initiative. Immediately end the lockdowns, grand and petit, as well as all threats and prospects of such. This course of action is the one that the authors of the pieces to which I linked call for wisely – and specifically.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

Professor of Economics

Bài trước: Hãy đánh giá đúng

Hãy đánh giá đúng

ko phải những thành tựu kinh tế chỉ có người giàu hưởng (như truyền thông hay nói), mà người nghèo mới là người thắng cuộc lớn nhất,

ở các nước giàu, giờ ko phải đói ăn đói mặc nữa, kể cả người nghèo, có lo là lo những vấn đề của "thế giới thứ nhất", như béo phì hay netflix chẳng có gì hay để xem...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page six of the print version of Art Carden’s and Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s superb lead essay for the September/October 2020 Cato Policy Report – an essay  (tiểu luận) (“How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World”) that is excerpted (đoạn trích) from their forthcoming book (for which I have already placed my order at Amazon, and encourage you to place yours), Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich):

It would be cold comfort (sự an ủi ít ỏi) if the gains since 1800, or 1960, had gone to the rich, as you hear claimed every day. But the poor have been the big winners. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter described “the capitalist achievement” in his 1942 book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: “Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings (vớ dài bằng lụa). The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort.” Marie Antoinette is supposed to have said, when told that the peasants had no bread, “Let them eat cake” (well, “brioche,” but same difference.) In rich countries now, people worry about different problems. All of us, even the poor, have too much bread. We eat too much cake. We are on our way to a world in which everyone has “first‐​world” problems such as bulging waistlines, cluttered closets, and nothing good to watch on Netflix.

Bài trước: Đừng đổ lỗi cho kinh tế thị trường

Đừng đổ lỗi cho kinh tế thị trường

hay chủ nghĩa tư bản vì sản sinh ra các hàng hóa tiêu dùng không lý tưởng, không chất lượng cao, không vì mục đích cao cả/cao thượng...,

cầu nào cung nấy...,

đổ lỗi vậy khác nào đổ lỗi cho bồi bàn vì khiến mình... béo phì...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 277 of Israel Kirzner’s insightful (sâu sắc, sáng suốt) November 1980 lecture titled “The Morality of Capitalist Success,” as this lecture is reprinted in the 2019 collection of some of Kirzner’s papers (edited by Peter J. Boettke and Frédéric Sautet), Reflections on Ethics, Freedom, Welfare Economics, Policy, and the Legacy of Austrian Economics:

Defenders of capitalism are justifiably quick to reject (bác bỏ) criticisms (chỉ trích) of it which denounce (lên án, phản đối kịch liệt, lăng mạ) the many kinds of consumption goods (hàng hóa tiêu dùng) produced by capitalism that fall short of the ideals of high quality and noble (cao cả, cao thượng) purpose. The market system is not to be blamed, it is properly pointed out, for the crassness (sự thô bỉ) of tastes demonstrated by consumers. To blame the market for faithfully catering to these preferences, would be equivalent, to use George Stigler’s delightful metaphor, to blaming the waiter for obesity.

Bài trước: Sheldon Richman đã nói gì?

Sheldon Richman đã nói gì?

'phong tỏa' không làm kiệt quệ nền kinh tế, nó làm kiệt quệ 'những người đang vật lộn để sống'.

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In two short Facebook posts Sheldon Richman conveys more insight and wisdom than is today found in any randomly chosen selection of 1,000,001 op-eds, columns, editorials, blogposts, tweets, and speeches.

Here:

How interesting that the people most worried about Trump’s authoritarian personality demand draconian government responses to the pandemic.

And here:

Lockdown doesn’t cripple “the economy.” It cripples people who are trying to live.

Hear! Hear!

Bài trước: Cứ tự nhiên

Cứ tự nhiên

nền kinh tế - không phải một cỗ máy - mà gồm hàng triệu người với động cơ khác nhau tùy thuộc vào sự thận trọng, dũng cảm, niềm tin, hy vọng của họ... và theo đuổi hằng hà sa số các dự án đa dạng,

cứ để diễn ra tự nhiên, đừng can thiệp...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 103 of the May 9th, 2020, draft of the important monograph – forthcoming this month jointly from the Adam Smith Institute and AIER – by Deirdre N. McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State:

[T]he economy is composed of people, and is not a machine. It is like the English language, not like an English steam engine. The people are motivated in varying proportions by prudence, temperance, courage, justice, faith, hope, and love, with the corresponding vices. By way of such principles of motion, they pursue their endlessly diverse projects, knitting and model railroading…. Let them do it, laissez faire. Such an arrangement takes people to be liberated and equal and increasingly competent adults, as against the stolid (dửng dưng, lãnh đạm; lù đù, phản ứng chậm) peasants or helpless proletarians (người vô sản) of conservative or progressive theorizing since 1848.

Bài trước: Thực tế đi

Thực tế đi

covid-19: bệnh dịch "nguy hiểm" đến đâu, đều có thuốc chữa,

quyền lực chính phủ mở rộng (lấy cớ dịch bệnh), thì ko thuốc nào chữa được,

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In my latest article for AIER I express genuine (thật thà, chân thành) mystification (bối rối, hoang mang, khó hiểu) at many people’s gullibility (tính khờ dại, cả tin) for the use of unprecedented (chưa từng có tiền lệ) government powers to combat Covid-19. A slice:

Why this faith? The proffered answer, of course, is that Covid-19 is unusually dangerous and, therefore, we have no choice but to put faith in government officials. This answer is bizarre, for it insists that we must now trust with unprecedented power people who regularly act in ways that prove them to be unworthy to hold lesser amounts of power. My head explodes….

Moving on, and without pausing to explore just what is meant here by “unusually,” let’s grant that Covid-19 is indeed unusually dangerous. But also unusually dangerous is arbitrary government power. Is it unreasonable for those of us who fear this power to require that proponents of lockdowns (phong tỏa) meet a higher standard of persuasion (thuyết phục) before we accede to the exercise of such power? Given that the initial spark for the lockdowns, at least in the United Kingdom and the United States, was Neil Ferguson’s suspect and widely criticized Imperial Model – a model, recall, offered by a man with an awful record of dramatically exaggerating the likely mortality rates of diseases – is it unreasonable to demand that much stronger evidence be offered before we turn silent as governments continue massively to interrupt (gián đoạn) normal life (đời sống thường ngày)?

If you’re tempted to answer these questions in the affirmative, recognize that there’s at least one important difference between pathogens (mầm bệnh, nguồn bệnh) and power – a difference that should be, but isn’t, taken into consideration by pro-lockdowners. The difference is this: Population immunity, either through a pathogen’s natural spread or through a vaccine, will at some point significantly reduce that pathogen’s danger; in contrast, for protection against government power there is no population immunity or vaccine. When such power expands, the ratchet effect documented by Robert Higgs ensures that that power remains more elevated and widespread than before.

Unlike pathogens, government power continues to nourish itself as it grows into an ever-greater danger. Quaking at the very thought of Covid while discounting the danger that lurks in the immense expansions of government power done in the name of fighting Covid is wholly unreasonable.

Bài trước: Biết đâu là điểm dừng

Biết đâu là điểm dừng

dự án đầu tư không hiệu quả, tư nhân sẽ phủi ngay, hạn chế lỗ vốn, còn nhà nước, cố chứng minh mình đúng, càng trợ cấp càng đốt thêm tiền thuế của dân thôi...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from pages 73-74 of the 2016 Third Edition of James D. Gwartney’s, Richard L. Stroup’s, Dwight R. Lee’s, Tawni H. Ferrarini’s, and Joseph P. Calhoun’s excellent Common Sense Economics:

In a world of uncertainty (bất định), mistaken (sai lầm trong ý kiến) investments (khoản đầu tư) are a necessary price that must be paid (cái giá cần thiết phải trả) for with fruitful innovations in new technologies and products. Such counterproductive projects, however, must be recognized and brought to a halt. In a market economy, the capital market performs this function. If a firm continues to experience losses, eventually (cuối cùng, rốt cuộc) investors (nhà đầu tư) will terminate the project (dừng dự án) and stop wasting their money.

Given the pace of change and the diversity of entrepreneurial talent, the knowledge required for sound decision-making about the allocation of capital is far beyond the scope of any single leader, industrial planning committee, or government agency. Without a private capital market, there is no mechanism that can be counted on to consistently channel investment funds into wealth-creating projects.

Bài trước: Thật kiêu ngạo

Thật kiêu ngạo

mỗi người một phân công nhiệm vụ, một sở thích và tích lũy kiến thức khác nhau, dẫn hướng trong hoạt động đời sống hằng ngày,

thực tế rất phức tạp, một nhóm người ủng hộ "chính sách công nghiệp" không thể lường hết được,

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 170 of Roger Koppl’s important – and (I repeat) especially relevant – 2018 book Expert Failure; (the quotations within this quotation are from Alfred Schutz) (link added; original emphasis):

Each of us has a different place in the division of labor (phân công lao động). Therefore, each of us knows different things and has different sensibilities (độ nhạy) to events (sự kiện) around us. We have different stereotypes (mẫu sẵn, mẫu rập khuôn) and recipes to guide us in us in our daily lives. Each person’s “prevailing system of interests” determines which elements of his “stock of knowledge” are relevant to him.

DBx: Yep. This truth is another that is completely lost on proponents (người ủng hộ) not only of full-on socialism, but also of industrial policy (chính sách công nghiệp). Proponents of such schemes think, mistakenly, that reality is no more complex (phức tạp) than is the array of details that they have in their minds.

How childish (trẻ con). How foolish (ngớ ngẩn). How arrogant (kiêu ngạo).

Bài trước: Đừng nhầm lẫn

Đừng nhầm lẫn

"chính sách công nghiệp" không phải khuyến nghị/đề xuất của nhà nước đâu, mà là 'mệnh lệnh' của nhà nước ép người dân đấy...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 307 of Kristian Niemietz’s important 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies:

Since economic activity cannot be coordinated by scarcity signals (tín hiệu khan hiếm) – i.e. market prices – the only substitute is command (mệnh lệnh) and control (kiểm soát). When people do not behave in the way economic planners want them to behave, the state needs to use force to make them comply (tuân thủ).

DBx: Do not overlook this reality: Industrial policy is not a series of recommendations that the state kindly offers to citizens. It is, instead, a set of commands that the state imposes (áp đặt) on its citizens. The state will enforce these commands against any and all who resist (kháng cự, chống đối) them, with violence if necessary. Government officials will cage you if you refuse to obey their orders. And if you resist this caging with sufficient stubbornness, these same government officials will see to it that you are killed.

So-called “industrial policy” is not sweet counseling. It is brute force.

If you trust Donald Trump and his lieutenants and lackeys (người hầu, đầy tớ; kẻ xu nịnh, kẻ khúm núm; tay sai) with such power, I pity you for your gullibility. Ditto if you trust with such power Joe Biden and his cronies and keepers. If you trust any human being with such power, you are a fool.

Unfortunately, the world is overpopulated with such fools.

Bài trước: Ảo tưởng về 'nhà nước khởi tạo'

Ảo tưởng về 'nhà nước khởi tạo'

các dự án do nhà nước đầu tư thật ra là ngớ ngẩn thôi, như máy bay concorde và mỏ carmichael, được giảm thuế và trợ cấp quá lâu, chứ chẳng tự sống được...

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trích dẫn hôm nay… is from page 88 of the May 9th, 2020, draft of the important monograph – forthcoming in October jointly from the Adam Smith Institute and AIER – by Deirdre McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State (links added):

The State’s projects that in fact prove foolish, such as the Concorde and the Carmichael mine, last for a long, long time, with tax-and-regulation subsidization (trợ cấp). The Carmichael mine would be producing coal (than) that nobody would buy at the high cost at which it can be mined well into the age (thời đại) of solar panels (tấm năng lượng mặt trời). The Concorde lasted from its first unprofitable (không có khả năng sinh lợi nhuận) flight in 1976 to its last unprofitable flight in 2003. Twenty-seven years of failing the test of commercial profitability is to be contrasted with NeXt’s one year, Edsel’s three years, New Coke’s three months, Google Glass 2012-2015, Juicero in 2017 for squeezing oranges (closed down five months after a massive investment in it by Silcom Valley). Declares [Mariana] Mazzucato: the invisible hand, which works quickly, should be replaced by a visible fist of the State, which keeps on pounding. We don’t think so.

Bài trước: Mang việc về nước Mỹ

New York cũng phạt các cơ sở y tế tăng giá bán khẩu trang

từ năm 1544 (thế kỷ 16), Luis Saravia de la Calle đã nói rồi: giá bán được lập ko phải dựa trên chi phí, nhân công, rủi ro... mà dựa trên sự khan hiếm...; giá đúng ko theo chi phí mà theo ước tính chung (cộng đồng)...

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...The story of your correspondent’s local corner shop offers a cautionary tale.

This type of shop was once familiar in New York, but has largely been squeezed out by chains (chuỗi siêu thị) and bank branches. The owner is an immigrant (người nhập cư) who opens early and closes late. In crises the shop stocks the products that customers need. When flooding (lũ) from Hurricane Sandy caused a blackout (mất điện) in 2012, it sold batteries (pin), torches (đèn pin), candles (nến) and board games. During the pandemic (đại dịch) it has been piled high with boxes of sanitiser (nước sát khuẩn), bleach (chất tẩy trắng), masks (khẩu trang) and gloves (găng tay).

Stocking up comes with risks (rủi ro). Acquiring inventory (hàng tồn kho) is costly. Demand drops off when normality returns—unwanted board games linger in the back of the shop. And this time, the rules changed. In March a woman bought a box of masks (each mask costing $2), and then said she was from the city’s office of consumer affairs (bảo vệ người tiêu dùng), and charged the shopkeeper for violating new price-gouging (tăng giá quá đáng, nâng giá cơ hội) rules. Two days later, says the shopkeeper, another inspector (thanh tra) charged the shop again, this time offering guidance on the right prices. Masks should cost no more than $1; gloves selling at $19.95 should sell for only $14.95. Each package marked above the permitted price would be fined $500. There were many packages.

…Shortly before a rescheduled hearing, the shop’s proprietor (người chủ, người sở hữu (nhất là một công ty, một khách sạn, bằng sáng chế..)) received an offer to settle the first charge for a little over $7,000. That is much more than his monthly profit, he says from behind the plastic screen now distancing him from customers, looking glumly at a stack of legal papers on his counter. But the fines would be ruinous….The shopkeeper will settle…Justice in the Big Apple has been opaque and costly—and raises the question of who precisely is being gouged.

As Luis Saravia de la Calle said in 1544:

Those who measure the just price by the labor, costs, and risk incurred by the person who deals in the merchandise or produces it, or by the cost of transport or the expense of traveling… or by what he has to pay the factors for their industry, risk, and labor, are greatly in error (sai lầm trầm trọng), and still more so are those who allow a certain profit of a fifth or a tenth. For the just price arises from the abundance or scarcity of goods, merchants, and money… and not from costs, labor, and risk. If we had to consider labor and risk in order to assess the just price, no merchant would ever suffer loss, nor would abundance or scarcity of goods and money enter into the question. Prices are not commonly fixed on the basis of costs. Why should a bale of linen brought overland from Brittany at great expense be worth more than one which is transported cheaply by sea?… Why should a book written out by hand be worth more than one which is printed, when the latter is better though it costs less to produce?… The just price is found not by counting the cost but by the common estimation. (Grice-Hutichinson, 110-111).

Bài trước: Ruchir Sharma đã nói gì?