Interesting blog bits

1. Tom M on Luck, Size, and the NZ Super. The EMH is always worth keeping in mind when dealing with financial markets.
2. Brad Taylor on Symbolic Cellphone Bans. Premise 1: We must do something. Premise 2: This is something. Conclusion: We must do this.
3. Kiwiblog on NZ most peaceful nation on Earth.
4. Eric Crampton on Ignorance and current events. People know bugger all.
5. Philip Booth on Blame our inadequate politicians for the slump. Politicians, regulators and central bankers are responsible for creating what liberal economists call “the rules of the game” within which markets operate - and they have designed them badly. In short government failure and not market failure is responsible for the collapse in financial markets.
6. David Friedman on Carbon Taxes, Cap and Trade, and All That. In a system run by philosopher kings, the only important difference between cap and trade and a carbon tax is the information required to set the level of emissions or amount of tax. In the real world, cap and trade has the (political) advantage of getting large parts of the regulated industry in favor of the regulation and thus eliminating a lot of potential opposition. The cost, possibly more than a hundred percent of it, is shifted to the customers, which is to say the general public—a dispersed and politically impotent interest group. And if the government retains considerable flexibility in just how emission permits get allocated, it can use some of them to buy political support from other groups or to reward them for past support.