Interesting blog bits

1. Brad Taylor on Bootleggers and Baptists: Normatively Ambiguous. Lobbying gives you outcomes which are very good for the industry (at least, good for existing players), but very bad for consumers.
2. Liberty Scott on Local government cargo cult - Hawke's Bay Airport. The airport should be privatised, the government should flog off its ownership so that a private owner can put in some directors with some business acumen, and the councils should be required to sell off their shares.
3. BK Drinkwater on Geddis On Citizen-Initiated Referenda. Referenda, good or bad?
4. Robin Hanson on Why Signals Are Shallow. We all want to affiliate with high status people, but since status is about common distant perceptions of quality, we often care more about what distant observers would think about our associates than about how we privately evaluate them.
5. Robert L. Scheuttinger and Eamonn F. Butler on Price Fixing in Ancient Rome. It failed.
6. Helmut Reisen on Shifting wealth: Is the US dollar Empire falling? If history is any guide, the Chinese renminbi will soon be due to overtake the US dollar, just as the dollar replaced the pound sterling last century. But will the renminbi be ready for reserve currency status? This article discusses the issues at hand and explains why some experts would prefer the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights as the next global reserve currency.
7. Homepaddock on Milk too expensive or people too poor? Price controls are simply a tax on production and if they were imposed on farmers they’d stop supplying the domestic market in favour of exporting or change from dairying to something more profitable.