Interesting blog bits

1. William Easterly on The Pope, the G8, and the “Man in Charge” Fallacy. No one is in charge, just don't tell the Pope. Tom M at Defective Equilibrium discusses the issue here.
2. Kiwiblog on Labour and Hitler. New Zealand continued to push for negotiations with Hitler even as Britain declared war, while still honouring a trade agreement made with Germany in 1937. Who knew? BK Drinkwater comments here. Not PC here.
3. Lawrence H. White asks Can the Monetary System Regulate Itself? Our current system, no, but a free banking system on a gold standard, yes.
4. Alex Tabarrok on Markets in Everything: Dead and Live Souls.
5. Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg discuss Kinship and conflict. Can trade and democracy promote peace or is armed conflict deeply rooted in cultural, ethnic, and religious differences? This column introduces a novel way to estimate the direct effect of long-term relatedness on the risk of international conflict and finds that, while democracies and open economies are less conflict-prone, the risk of conflict is actually greater among more closely related populations.
6. Akhil Shah on Taxes. Taxes, on the face of it, may not seem a threat to liberty, but the scale of tax rises that we are facing for a large part of this century mean that they will have a substantial impact on our lives and liberty. This posting is talking about the UK but the basic ideas apply more generally.
7. John Macilree notes that Fuel prices bouncing back up. The prices of aviation jet fuel and residual fuel oil (RFO) used in ships are on the raise. Is this good or bad? Depends on what's driving it.