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Articles tagged with: Externalities

Culture, Philosophy »

[16 Jul 2009 | One Comment | 213 views]
What’s Wrong with Consumption Apparently Everything

I came across this NY Times article which covered a video that is “about the effects of human consumption.” Well, more accurately it reflects the negatives of human consumption.

The video was created by Annie Leonard, a former Greenpeace employee and an independent lecturer who paints a picture of how American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned.
Apparently the video quickly spread among teachers who,

recommended it to one another as a brief, provocative way of drawing students into …

Economics »

[18 May 2009 | No Comment | 280 views]
Smoke Stack on the Back of Government Programs

I was just watching an interview with Milton Friedman and he stated that,

There is a smoke stack on the back of every government program. That is to say that every government programs impose a cost on third parties where the third parties are not receiving compensation.

This came out of the context of discussing when government may need to intervene in the market. Milton Friedman and some other classical liberals (libertarians) think that the only case for government is when it is not feasible for market arrangements to make …