Lynne Kiesling Nest’s recent business developments are refreshing and promising. Building on the popularity of its elegant and easy-to-use learning thermostat in its first couple of years, Nest is introducing new Nest-enabled services to automate changes in settings and energy use in the home. Called Rush Hour Rewards and Seasonal Savings, Nest claims: Rush Hour …
Michael Giberson … or a clumsy cartel causing excessive volatility in world oil prices, or maybe none of the above. Earlier this week the Cato Institute hosted a discussion of a recent report by Andrew Morriss and Roger Meiners, “Competition in World Oil Markets: A Meta-Analysis and Review.” Panelists included Morriss, FedEx chairman Frederick Smith, and …
Michael Giberson Last week the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General announced settlement of two of the 24 post-Sandy price gouging cases the state has pursued. Shiv Shivam Inc., doing business as Lukoil in Piscataway agreed to pay $20,000 to the state; C.S. George & Sons, Inc., doing business as George’s Gulf Station in …
Gasoline Retailer Getting Gouged by New Jersey Attorney General? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Recently Virginia Postrel used the US (PBS) premiere of “Mr. Selfridge” to highlight the underappreciated social and economic role of the department store. As she notes, Yet like railroads and telegraphs, the department stores of the late 19th and early 20th century were socially and economically transformative institutions. They pioneered innovations ranging from …
Department Stores As Economically Transformative Read More »
Michael Giberson From The Economist, “Wood, The fuel of the future“: WHICH source of renewable energy is most important to the European Union? Solar power, perhaps? (Europe has three-quarters of the world’s total installed capacity of solar photovoltaic energy.) Or wind? (Germany trebled its wind-power capacity in the past decade.) The answer is neither. By …
Michael Giberson Two foreign policy initiatives, both began in mid-March, one a year old and the other started ten years ago, have had dramatically different effects on the world. Eric Shierman celebrates the wiser of the two efforts: I have considered writing about the Iraq War on the tenth anniversary of our collective, bi-partisan decision …
Lynne Kiesling Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing highlights the Supreme Court’s copyright decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. Briefly, Wiley wanted the court to enforce copyright in a way that restricts the flow of book purchases across geographic regions (i.e., limiting the ability to buy cheaper versions elsewhere online). Clearly Wiley was attempting …
You Are Not Entitled to a Profitable Business Model Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Veronique de Rugy has a great argument for ending farm subsidies in the April issue of Reason (and yes, do read the whole thing, well worth your time). Farm subsidies are the canonical example of the dynamics of Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action — concentrated benefits and dispersed costs lead to the …
Michael Giberson In dry Texas, water use has been one of the bigger of the policy complaints tossed into the policy whirlwind surrounding hydraulic fracturing. A number of water quantity related bills are currently circulating in the Texas legislature and the Texas Railroad Commission (which regulated oil and gas drilling in the state) has considered …
Should Governments Raise the Cost of Water Used in Fracking? Read More »
Lynne Kiesling Reason’s been knocking it out of the park lately. Consider this article from Jim Epstein on doctors who have chosen to set up their practices to provide direct primary care. They don’t take insurance, they consult with patients in more flexible ways, and they charge lower fees as a result. This model is …
Jim Epstein: Doctors Going off the Insurance Grid Read More »
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