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(Don Boudreaux)

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My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy exposes the realities of democratic socialism. A slice:

The bottom line is that none of us can afford the true budgetary costs of the Democrat Socialist dream. And that’s just the financial costs. It says nothing about the stifling of innovation, of entrepreneurship, and of work under such plan.

Speaking of socialism, here’s a great cartoon by way of Mark Perry.

Also speaking of socialism – or of socialist twitchings – James Copland is rightly critical of Elizabeth Warren’s new scheme to radically restructure corporate governance in the U.S. seize the private property of investors.

Christopher Freiman writes about real socialism. (HT David Levey)

Also from Mark Perry is this excellent Venn diagram.

Steve Davies reveals the economic illiteracy that fuels opposition to so-called ‘ticket scalping.’

Here’s Iain Murray on the case for free trade. (While I agree enthusiastically with nearly all that Iain writes here, I am more favorably disposed in practice than I believe Iain is toward trade agreements.)

GMU Econ alum Rosolino Candela and Vincent Geloso have just published, in Public Choice, a fascinating paper on the history of lightships. Here’s the abstract:

What role does government play in the provision of public goods? Economists have used the lighthouse as an empirical example to illustrate the extent to which the private provision of public goods is possible. This inquiry, however, has neglected the private provision of lightships. We investigate the private operation of the world’s first modern lightship, established in 1731 on the banks of the Thames estuary going in and out of London. First, we show that the Nore lightship was able to operate profitably and without government enforcement in the collection of payments for lighting services. Second, we show how private efforts to build lightships were crowded out by Trinity House, the public authority responsible for establishing and maintaining lighthouses in England and Wales. By including lightships into the broader lighthouse market, we argue that the provision of lighting services exemplifies not a market failure, but a government failure.