The Liberal Order

How Not To Act While Serving On A Jury

Maybe the judge should have (might have) better explained to the jury what it means to serve as an "impartial" juror. 

Courtney Downing happened to be the defendant in the case that concerned a 2008 car wreck and [juror Jonathan] Hudson thought it would be a brilliant idea to befriend Downing on Facebook during the trial. Downing reported the friend request to her attorney and this led the judge to dismiss Hudson from the jury immediately.

A 4-Minute Lesson In the History of Economics Since 1800

 

One More On the NPR Story

In the NPR story I linked to below about how Wal-Mart and Home Depot trump FEMA in serving those adversely affected by hurricanes and other disasters, is this note:

[Home Depot] district managers have been focusing on stocking a short list of items, Householder says, including generators, chain saws, water and tarps.

Householder says those supplies are flowing to stores because of a process that began months ago, at the beginning of hurricane season.

"We take storm product, both pre- and post-strike product, we stage those in containers and we have them in our distribution centers, really ready for a driver to pull up and pick up and take them to our stores," he says.

Holding inventory incurs an opportunity cost. Not only does Home Depot pay for goods they do not plan on selling until some later date, which means they forego use of such funds until some later date, they also incur a cost in using valuable storage space to hold these items until they're needed. When price controls and other anti-gouging statutes are legislated that forbid stores and individuals from charging more for goods and services after a disaster than what they were charging before the disaster, are stores like Home Depot likely to incur the expense of carrying this excess inventory? Not at all. And those adversely affected by this decision are precisely those such legislation professes to help.

Serving Society's Needs In the Face of Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene is threatening the east coast from North Carolina to Massachusetts. It is projected to cause serious damage, which of course requires mobilizing resources to the affected areas such as plywood, generators, chainsaws, food, ice, etc.

Fortunately, there is a disaster command center and a separate Emergency Management Center coordinating efforts and directing resources to the areas predicted to be most affected by the hurricane.

Who is operating these emergency preparedness activities? FEMA? National Guard? No, it's Wal-Mart and Home Depot, motivated (possibly) by nothing more than self-interested profit seeking.  

Walmart is able to anticipate surges in demand during emergencies by using a huge historical database of sales from each store as well as sophisticated predictive techniques, Cooper says.

He says that with Irene on the way, that system is helping them allocate things like batteries, ready-to-eat foods and cleaning supplies to areas in the storm's path.

Walmart also has the advantage of having a staff meteorologist, Cooper says.

"When those forecasts come out, it's great to have somebody in-house that can evaluate that information so that we can give real-time information to our associates, not only here at headquarters but out in the field," he says.

Quoted in the story is the ever-insightful Steve Horwitz.

Leon Panetta On the Wars In Iraq and Afghanistan

Over at EconLog, David Henderson discusses the response of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to a question posed by Henderson. Henderson rightly criticizes Panetta for ignoring cost-benefit analysis.

But Panetta would also do the world a favor if he understood the concept of sunk costs. Panetta remarked,

The goal is to leave Iraq and Afghanistan stable, secure and "in a position to build on the sacrifices that have been made," he said.

Those sacrifices are sunk costs and have no bearing on whether or not we should incur more losses of human life and resources to continue fighting those wars. Regardless of whether you believe fighting the wars is worthwhile or not, it should be based on sound reasoning, not poor logical anaylisis. I will spend a good portion of my day tomorrow teaching undergraduates the importance of not making this kind of mistake.

Steve Jobs Is Stepping Down

What a huge loss. Apple's stock down 5% in after-hours trading.

Potential Rule Changes for the NFL

In a move to seemingly reduce head-bashing collisions, the NFL moved the spot where kickoffs are made to the 35-yard line. The result is that most kickoffs sail out of the end zone for a touchback. 

Bill Belichick proposes two rule changes, one of which is to eliminate kickoffs altogether and have the offense just begin on the 20-yard line. The second is to get rid of the PAT (point after touchdown). Both, argues Belichick, do nothing to increase interest in the game and simply raise the cost to fans watching. Spoken like a true economist. (BTW - It's only the kickoff under the current rule change that does nothing to increase interest in the game since it's almost a given that the ball will be kicked out of the end zone.)

Now, author MJD offers a brillian alternative, which is to award the scoring team 7 points for each touchdown (the PAT is a gimme, why not just award it and not go through the motions), and if they wish to attempt a two-point conversion, allow it (but at the six-yard line). If the scoring team tries for two points and fails, they end up with six points rather than seven, and if the make it, they end up with eight points rather than seven.

Now if we could only get this rule change implemented. 

7 Grammar Mistakes, and More

From Newmark's Door, seven common grammar mistakes. I would also add the following:

Less and fewer - if you can count them it's fewer, if not it's less. "He got less donuts than me." doesn't make sense, nor does "There are less people over there." 

Good and well - "I did well on the test." not "I did good on the test."

Me and myself - myself is reflexive and refers to the subject in the clause. You wouldn't say, "I am going to the store with themselves." or "Me and themselves are going to play golf." Correct usage is "I hurt myself." which means I harmed me. But "John and myself were thinking of going hiking." is grammatically incorrect.

 

Social Media Sucks At Driving Traffic to Your Website

Quite simply, when it comes to driving traffic to your website, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook kind of suck at it, at least according to a study done by a company called Outbrain.

Once the study is taken into account, even the Drudge Report, a much smaller operation by comparison, out does Twitter and Facebook combined. It should be noted that the king of traffic referrals is, of course, Google. So much so, in fact, they are lapping the rest of the field.

Comfortably.

Story here. 

Is Ron Paul the Media's Rodney Dangerfield

Jon Stewart rightly criticizes the media for blatantly ignoring Ron Paul. Whether you agree with him or support him or hate him, this is absurd treatment by the media. 

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Indecision 2012 - Corn Polled Edition - Ron Paul & the Top Tier
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