• About

Sacred Cow Chips

Sacred Cow Chips

Monthly Archives: April 2014

Limited Liability: Elixer or Fascist Monstrosity?

06 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Corporate Form, Libertarianism, Limited Liability

Image

Can Libertarians support limited liability for corporate shareholders with a clear conscience? Limited liability attached to corporate ownership is a wholly distinct form of property right granted by the state. As a result, many Libertarians view it as an “artificial” or “unnatural” right, casting the corporate form of organization as an institutionalized rent-seeker’s bonanza. However, limited liability can arise via private contract even without formal recognition of a separate form of property by the state, and there are strong arguments in favor of limited liability as an economic catalyst. Moreover, certain legal dimensions of property ownership are more consistent with limited liability than are often admitted by detractors. Preserving limited liability for corporate shareholders now may be more important than ever, given the way that exposure to tort actions has expanded over time.

The following articles illuminate some arguments in favor of limited liability:

Megan McArdle: Be Glad That Corporate Liability Is Limited.

From a Libertarian/Austrian perspective: Corporations and Limited Liability for Torts.

Gender Gap Claptrap

05 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Equal Pay, Gender Wage Gap, Wage controls

Image

The gender wage gap disappears after controlling for voluntary choices made by women and men regarding occupation, emphasis on family time and duties and/or personal preferences. These decisions often have sociological roots, but they are private decisions in the first instance and not amenable to engineering via regulatory action. For example, controlling for just one factor, marital status, accounts for 75% of the gender difference in average wages. In the post linked above, Mark Perry at Carpe Diem thoroughly debunks the wage gap myth.

It is already illegal to pay equally-situated men and women different salaries. Yet it is just too difficult for some politicians to resist using the difference in average wages as an excuse for regulating private employment decisions and wages. The pernicious effects of this kind of legislation are discussed in ‘Paycheck Fairness’ Will Lead to Fewer Paychecks, Less Fairness. It’s particularly interesting that the “Paycheck Fairness Act” would expose private employers to class action lawsuits over wage differences. Needless to say, trial lawyers are enthused.

Interstellar Travel Takes a Big Crowd

04 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Interstellar Travel

Image

How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System? Maintaining genetic diversity (and withstanding catastrophes) takes a lot more pioneers than previous calculations suggested. It may also help with casting the starship musicals.  

Statists Deserve What They Get, But Just Can’t Spare the Rest of Us

04 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Obamacare

Image

Obamacare: A Catastrophe Like No Other. Noonan: “What the bill declared it would do—insure tens of millions of uninsured Americans—it has not done. There are still tens of millions uninsured Americans. On the other hand, it has terrorized millions who did have insurance and lost it, or who still have insurance and may lose it.”

The Tragic Obamacare Adventure

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Health Care, Mandate Waivers, Obamacare

Image

Obamacare: Some high-risk individuals have gained cheaper health coverage under the ACA. Some previously uninsured individuals will now have coverage. But as a consequence, direct harm has been caused to other individuals, and the financial costs have been massive. Just take a look here. The positive outcomes could have been accomplished with much less strife, but that’s another post. Here, I’m merely taking inventory of the abject failure that is Obamacare:

28 delays and extensions: Obama has done more to repeal Obamacare than the GOP could have hoped to accomplish themselves, (but these actions are of questionable legality). That’s the good news.

Only 14% Of Obamacare Exchange Sign-Ups Are Previously Uninsured Enrollees.

The Administration conducted a wholly dishonest campaign to “sell” the law to the public (“if you like your plan you can keep it”), and the dishonest PR spin continues.

Waived mandates for the President’s cronies.

Roughly 5M lose their individual coverage.

Big premiums hikes (30% in CA, and often higher elsewhere), with strong likelihood of more increases for next year due to adverse selection on the exchanges.

Networks under Obamacare have been thinned in an attempt to reduce costs. Will you really keep your doctor?

Full-time positions become part-time positions (this is likely to resume as the now-delayed employer mandate approaches).

Web site failures impose private costs of untold hours on would-be applicants.

Massive implementation costs, including an often demented ad campaign on the taxpayer dime.

Massive subsidies inflate the federal deficit.

A panoply of new taxes.

Prosperity Exposed

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brookings, Growth, Income Distribution

Image

This Brookings research by Gary Burtless reveals lessons about changes in incomes in the U.S. that may be surprising to some. These changes relate to quintiles of the distribution, NOT to migration of individuals across quintiles. The data do not show stagnation in the middle and lower end of the income distribution. Non-cash sources of income have grown rapidly relative to total income. The changes show that income at the top is quite volatile, and income at the low end has been insulated from shocks by transfer payments. 

Redistributionists should love this data in many ways, but I suspect this information will be passed over by the left to avoid diluting their message that more redistribution is needed to achieve social justice…  always more.

Is Invention Self-Breeding?

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Nuetzel in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joel Mokyr, Technology

Image

The Next Age of Invention, by Joel Mokyr in City Journal, is a nice antidote to the many neo-Luddite doomsayers lurking within the social sciences. Some highlights (for me) were his discussion of some of the ways in which national income accounting understates the benefits of new technologies, reasons why we might be poised for dramatic advances, the trend toward (and variety of) potential “small” innovations, and technological “bite-back” and how it spurs additional improvements. Last but not least, this article was fun for me because Mokyr takes on my former thesis advisor! He does not discuss the mechanisms by which the benefits of future innovations will be diffused, which is somewhat controversial, but I have no doubt that they will be diffused widely with time. 

Newer posts →
Follow Sacred Cow Chips on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • A Warsh Policy Scenario At the Federal Reserve
  • The Coexistence of Labor and AI-Augmented Capital
  • The Case Against Interest On Reserves
  • Immigration and Merit As Fiscal Propositions
  • Tariff “Dividend” From An Indigent State

Archives

  • February 2026
  • January 2026
  • December 2025
  • November 2025
  • October 2025
  • September 2025
  • August 2025
  • July 2025
  • June 2025
  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014

Blogs I Follow

  • Passive Income Kickstart
  • OnlyFinance.net
  • TLC Cholesterol
  • Nintil
  • kendunning.net
  • DCWhispers.com
  • Hoong-Wai in the UK
  • Marginal REVOLUTION
  • Stlouis
  • Watts Up With That?
  • Aussie Nationalist Blog
  • American Elephants
  • The View from Alexandria
  • The Gymnasium
  • A Force for Good
  • Notes On Liberty
  • troymo
  • SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers
  • Miss Lou Acquiring Lore
  • Your Well Wisher Program
  • Objectivism In Depth
  • RobotEnomics
  • Orderstatistic
  • Paradigm Library
  • Scattered Showers and Quicksand

Blog at WordPress.com.

Passive Income Kickstart

OnlyFinance.net

TLC Cholesterol

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The Future is Ours to Create

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

Stlouis

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

Scattered Showers and Quicksand

Musings on science, investing, finance, economics, politics, and probably fly fishing.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sacred Cow Chips
    • Join 128 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Sacred Cow Chips
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar