Recent content by Knighted

Actually, the Fed can affect long term interest rates as well. And they have been, in their latest machination called Operation Twist, where they sell bonds with short maturities and buy bonds with long 6-30 year maturities. The increased demand from the Fed's $400Billion purchase of long...

In the short term only. People will not hoard their money forever. What deflation WOULD do is increase the savings rate, because it would temper the drive created by inflation to spend as quickly as possible and even borrow and spend (since borrowers benefit in an inflationary environment...

I'm not totally buying this, and I think I disagree with Mises on this. If we think of it purely from a supply/demand perspective, it makes sense that a higher monetary velocity will produce price inflation. To illustrate this, suppose we focus on just two participants in an economy, say a...

This is the most ridiculous thing you've written thus far. Knowledge is a public good and private interests can't invest efficiently in public goods? How do you explain every modern invention in this world, then? They all originated from "knowledge." I hate to break it to you, but the...

Uh, no. Please go back and re-read the post you're replying to. This whole discussion has been about the hypothetical scenario of patent protections being removed from drugs. The reason that undercutters (generic producers) do not drive big pharma out of business today is BECAUSE of patent...

So you believe that money used in grant-based medical research, which is coming out of some anonymous donor's pockets and is taken and distributed at some "administrator's" behest, is going to be better and more wisely spent than money left in private hands with a profit incentive? If you...

Really? Pfizer, a single pharmaceutical company recently had $2 billion in R&D expenses. That's just one company alone. While it's true that some drugs are ultimately developed based upon findings from third party funded sources, they aren't simply handing big pharma companies a blank check...

I'm late in replying to this, but the claims you're making above are ridiculous. Was this written in jest? Chinese medicine is the most prominent example of quackery and "faith based" medicine in the world. Here, eat some tiger p*nis to make your more virile! What's the proof? Oh.. there is...

Abolishing the FDA would be a horrible idea, for two reasons. The first reason is the placebo effect. Regardless of a medicine's efficacy, a certain percentage of the population will feel better while taking it, even if it's nothing more than water pills. Some studies have shown this...

Patents have their pros and their cons. Providing an entity with exclusive rights to initially market and sell their product without fear of competition reduces their risks and allows them a large enough cushion to at least recapture in profits the money that went into that product's...

Implementing some sort of profit sharing scheme could help a lot in motivating the employees and improving production. The trick is doing it right and in a way that can't easily be abused.

Actually, I'm not. Unlike some, I have no such illusions about the free market. We don't have a free market. And some companies in specific industries are most certainly far better insulated from competition than others. However, even if we can cherry pick a few companies better insulated...

I can tell you how. Abolishing unemployment insurance would immediately force most of the population to work - no more being picky and only taking jobs that paid as much as their old ones. When there is a glut of workers actually seeking work, the country is in a situation where there is a...

Yes, it's unfortunate how oblivious people are to the effects of inflation. In a year of 5% inflation, your average person who is receiving a 3% raise will practically be dancing in the street celebrating, never realizing that they have actual taken a pay cut.

Inflation does not affect everyone equally. A common theme from Keynesians like Krugman is that monetary inflation raises prices equally across the board and that there is no net winners or losers, but that is obviously not true. If we follow newly introduced money as it flows through the...