O_O

[oyceter]

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education... Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.

via WSJ editorial, via owlectomy

I just. Sometimes I feel like a snot for assuming people know things, because god knows my learning curve has been very steep and is still going, but other times, all I can say is O_O. WHUT.

(Okay, this is where I admit having a Tumblr might be useful, since that was too long for Twitter and feels too short for a single blog post. But I Luddite-ly cling to my blog, because I like typing! A lot! My opinions, I show you them!)

Comments

[oyceter]

OMG he is an economics professor too. WTF. Now I am just "You ignorant asshat."

Poor people have worse health and tax the health care system because they don't eat organic vegetables grown in independently-owned farms! It's all their fault and has absolutely nothing to do with systemic inequality! @@x1000

[daedala]

He blogs at Cafe Hayek.

...

"Hayek" is Sekrit Internet Code Word for fucking asshole libertarian. (I don't actually know about what Hayek himself wrote; he's quoted in Wikipedia as saying, "probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez-faire capitalism," so I'm thinking he probably isn't as bad as the quality of his devotees implies.)

[sethg]

One of Hayek’s chief accomplishments, as I understand it, is a book, written in the 1940s, predicting that the socialistish policies that the British government of that time was introducing would inevitably turn Britain into a totalitarian country. Of course, like all good prophets, the failure of Hayek’s prophecy does nothing to harm his reputation among the true believers.

Also, Hayek saw nothing wrong with government intervention to protect the environment, or with socialized medicine. I think this makes him a liberal Democrat by today’s standards.