Skepticblog

At the Atheist Alliance International conference this past weekend in Burbank, California, the Skeptics Society had a booth in the vendor’s section of book sellers and the like, the latter of which included a table full of bumper stickers. One struck me as a poignant proxy for what I predicted will happen at the end of my book, The Mind of the Market: the Internet as a form of trade will enable freedom to find a way. The bumper sticker reads: The Revolution Will be Tweeted. I presume the reference is to the Iranian elections, the suppression of the protests of the corruption of which were tweeted.

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With the market meltdown of the past year those of us who are long-time supporters of the freedom of markets have by now heard the refrain: “What do you say now?” or “So much for your mighty market economics” and especially “See, deregulation doesn’t work.”

Let’s dispense with the “deregulation” myth right here. The list of new regulations called the Federal Register averaged 72,844 pages during the Carter administration, 54,335 pages during Reagan’s presidency, climbed to 59,527 pages for Bush the First, escalated during the Clinton years to 71,590 pages, and set an all-time record during Bush the Second at 75,526 pages, supposedly the era of deregulated markets run amok. So much for the Republicans as the party of government nonintervention. Continue reading…

Treating Wall Street and the financial industry like professional sports brings a new perspective to the motivation of traders and financers

In the midst of our financial crisis it was inevitable that there would be references to the 1987 film Wall Street, in which Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko explains what really drives market capitalism: “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.” Continue reading…