The Socialism Series
Book Club Registration Ends Soon
A big shoutout to all of the support for the new Market Power Book Club! Like I said last week, I was nervous to launch. But so many of you showed interest, and many have already joined. Our discussion board is open and we’re already starting to get to know each other.
If you missed the second email last week, the book club now has two tiers. There’s the base membership, which is $30 (just $5 a month), which gives you access to the discussion board. Then there’s full membership ($100), which has added benefits like Zoom calls. You can check the site for more details.
Even if you don’t want to (or can’t) join, I hope you’ll read along with us! The full list of books is available at the site. Over the weekend, I started the first book Mine!. I already love it—it’s an engaging discussion on the philosophy behind property rights, and it’s already changing how I’ll teach the principle to my students.
Registration ends on Wednesday (July 7). I’ll send out an email reminder. I hope to see you in the group!
The Socialism Series
I’ve been wanting to do a series on socialism, but I wanted to take the right approach. I didn’t want some over-simplified video with more holes than a cheese grater. But I finally discovered a way to start: looking at the effects of socialism.
Today’s focus is on North Korea. How do we know socialism has destroyed North Korea when we hardly have any data? We have some clever methods. I start by simulating the Korean economies with grass. It sounds bizarre, but it works!
If that interests you, look for the absurdly over-the-top thumbnail on YouTube. And if you like the video, I’d love a comment on it. I have a feeling this is going to be a video that gets a lot of hate…
Facebook Monopoly
One of last week’s biggest pieces of news was the court rejecting the FTC’s claim that Facebook is a monopoly. The court’s objection was that the FTC had not defined what market Facebook had a monopoly in. This gets to a central debate in the history of antitrust enforcement.
There have been two historical approaches to antitrust. One, you break up any company that gets too big. Two, you break up a company only if it’s harming consumers. The FTC (and Biden administration generally) is attempting the first. Many tech advocates say Facebook gets a pass under the second.
Maybe I’ll do a video on the history of these two antitrust policies.