EconoSpeak

 I have only just now learned that Dave Grether died on Sept. 12 of causes unreported at age 82. He was an emeritus prof of econ at Cal Tech.  He received his PhD in 1969 from Stanford in econometrics. He soon was at Cal Tech where he spent the rest of his career, soon becoming an early figure in experimental economics, coauthoring papers with colleague, Charles Plott, whom many think should have shared the Nobel Prize with Vernon Smith for founding experimental economics. Dave's most famous...

About a decade ago, I wrote a short piece about "labour power as a common-pool resource" that got picked up by Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation and led to me being invited to a conference on the commons in Berlin put on by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. I would now like to amend that to regard disposable time as the common-pool resource in question. Much of my original rationale applies as well or better to the new formulation. I am assuming that all of this will be new to most...

The right-wing War on Wokeness has won over Seattle progressive Democrats... "because we can't afford to give the GOP any ammunition for the 2022 election."Democrats, who are famous for "keeping our powder dry," are now concerned that their opponents may use the specter of wokeness against them unless they get out in front with hardy denunciations of wokeness.In other news, Susan Sarandon is still responsible for Hillary Clintons loss to Donald Trump in 2016. And don't get me started on Dan...

 Over the last month crude oil prices have noticeably declined from in the neighborhood of $85-86 per barrel to $78-80 per barrel. But there has been only a very small decline in retail gasoline prices, and the headlines even as of yesterday was all about "sharply rising gas prices." So, Pres. Biden has moved to release a record amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, getting several other nations to also release such reserves, including UK, South Korea, Japan, Inda, and maybe...

There are typically two levels in a case like Rittenhouse’s, the individual issues of justice and accountability, and the social implications of the crime and its judicial resolution.  I want to spend a moment with the second.America faces an impending crisis of vigilante suppression of democratic rights.  In the past year we’ve seen militias openly threatening violence in takeovers of state capitals, the Capitol Building in Washington and the streets that have seen protests against police...

We are experiencing climate change with a vengeance in British Columbia. For the past four summers, we have had horrific wildfires that send smoke all the way from the interior to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Last summer, we had a record-breaking "heat dome" that killed over 600 people and, after registering all-time heat records for several days, the town of Lytton burned to the ground. Currently, our third atmospheric river in three months has forced the evacuation of Merritt, B.C.,...

 Of course Donald Trump has been using this Big Lie method of simply endlessly repeating a Big Lie and successfully so with his claim that last year's presidential election was "rigged" or "stolen," with according to the latest poll I just saw on the order of 70% of Republicans accepting this Big Lie.But this practice seems to be spreading for yet more degeneration happening as figures who have not done this like Trump now seem to be imitating him also.  The latest is Hugh Hewitt, a...

 On the first page of today's Washington Post was reported a poll showing that when a random sample was asked, 46% said they would vote for a generic Republican candidate for Congress versus 43% for a generic Democratic candidate. Given reported further pro-GOP gerrymandering, if this were to hold for next year's midterms, GOP would certainly take solid control of the House, if not the Senate.  Not looking good for the Dems or Biden and Harris.Now there certainly some things that are not...

[embedded content]I'm on at 5:35 of the video. A little hoarse at 4 a.m.!

[embedded content]I'm on at 5:35 of the video. A little hoarse at 4 a.m.!