Wednesday, November 7, 2012

More on disaster economics!

1. Bob with a good post (although I'd change once small thing - I'd just strike "rather than the hurricane" in the first sentence).

2. Don with a bad post. I only share so that people can go nudge him in the right direction. I'm tired of it.

6 comments:

  1. > I'm tired of it.

    And as usual Don is right. It's a great post if you ask me, what he's saying can't be said enough times.

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  2. If you're disappointed that a post on a blog with Hayek in the name isn't good, it's your own fault for having unreasonably high expectations.

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    1. Aww, that's harsh. Hayek's alright.

      Funny, though.

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  3. What specifically is wrong with the cafehayek post? If the "Economist" he was responding to were making a point about idle resources, I agree it'd be an insufficient response, but it looks like he didn't.

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    1. I didn't see anything really wrong with the analysis of the article. And then Don completely changed the article and argued that it was about total losses - that the loss of property and assets was a beneficial thing, which wasn't ever argued in the article.

      The added problem in all of these posts by Don is that he convinces a lot of his readers that there are people out there who think that sort of thing, which as far as I've been able to tell there aren't.

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    2. The author of the article doesn't seem to think that destruction of capital goods is a loss. He doesn't take into account the fact that not all goods will be insured or that insurers may raise their premiums.

      He write "The calculations don't account for the lost productivity from the more than 32,000 people displaced in June, not to mention the dollars lost when businesses shuttered and tourists stayed away." So, he at least understands that lost labour is important.


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