Around The MOB: Market Power
By Mitch Berg
Gotta say one thing about the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers; there’s no shortage of economists.
Phil Miller writes Market Power, an excellent, consistent, fairly prolific blog that covers family life, Missouri sports and, yes, copious economics.
And his timing is perfect. I was just floundering through writing a post about Joe Conason’s idiotic Salon column saying the Tea Parties would leave the US open to catastrophes like Haiti’s response to their earthquake.
Miller, naturally, does it better:
3. On the one hand we have Haiti, an impoverished country hit by a magnitude 7 earthquake. The result was hundreds of thousands dead and terrible damage. On the other hand we have Chile, hit by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake, much, much worse than the quake that hit Haiti in terms of sheer seismic power (the Richter scale is based upon the base-10 logarithmic scale). Like the Haitian quake, this one was centered near a major city and it caused considerable damage. Unlike the Haitian quake, it also generated a tsunami that inundated coastal regions of Chile. It was a double whammy for Chile. But the death toll was much smaller than in Haiti (just over 700 dead from what I last saw).
Why the difference in death tolls? One argument can be made that Chile’s building codes were stricter than Haiti’s. That is true. But you also have to point to Chile having enough wealth and income to be able to afford having stronger building codes. You have to be able to take care of the basics – basic food and shelter – first before you take care of the fancy stuff – fancy food and shelter. Where does wealth and income come from? Generally speaking, from strong market institutions (HT Art Carden). Why does Chile have stronger market institutions than Haiti? Bret Stephens points to Milton Friedman.
Ironically, Friedman’s Nobel Prize ceremony was punctuated with protests for his having been associated with the Chilean dictatorship.
Phil Miller’s Market Power; all the Missouri, none of the Keynesianism.
