Publications, March

Another solid month with great material. Corona madness has meant that I have had a lot of interesting material to engage with while I keep working through my book list for 2020.

Happy reading.

Medium

• [1] 'Feeling Good, Not Doing Good', my biggest problem with the environmental movement: they're not really about improving people's lives - they're about feeling good about themselves. In this piece I discuss John Tierney's suburb essay "The Perverse Panic over Plastic"
• [2] 'Debt vs Government Cash Assistance', a quick and simple comment on so-called stimulus packages following Corona panic: just send cash. Not to "stimulate demand" or some such nonsense, but to fulfil financial obligations taken while presuming a stable future income. Financial insurance for those who most need it; no need for partisanship or complicated loan structures - just send cash. 

Notes on Liberty

• [3] '13 Books for 2020 - What a Year!', where I go through the books I'm most excited about for this year. I've already finished two of them, working on a third. I'll come back around discussing these themes, authors and titles as the year progresses. 

AIER: 

• [4] 'Of Course Capitalism Can Save Nature', with rhinos, elephants, gorillas and other such majestic animals. They're all going extinct, right? Dead wrong! And capitalism is saving them. 
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine, titled "Capitalism and Free Markets Can Save Nature for Humankind" and nice elephants in the caption picture. 
• [5] 'The Economics of Thinking One Step Further', a call to thinking further and embracing dynamic impacts. Alternatively: everything you thought you knew about the world was actually wrong:

"Killing animals in places where property rights over animals have been established doesn’t actually decimate the species. Instead it usually provides the financial incentive to keep more of them alive"

• Republished on CFI (Center for Individualism). 
• [6] 'The Fed and the Mad Urge to Do Something', a comment on the Fed's second round of emergency stimulus. Crazy - and probably to very little avail. Take-away message: we're done, Treasury. It's on you from now on.  
• [7] 'The Insoluble Perils of Prediction', where I married my love for writing about failed predictions with counter-signaling the most hysterical of commentators right now. Collateral damage = the ever-gloomy Nouriel Roubini whose clever-sounding predictions were so majestically debunked. Not that he noticed, of course, claiming that he predicted this and that his advice going forward are amazing and impressive. Bitch, please. 
• Translated and re-published into French (New language, I believe) at the French silver firm CGSP.
• [8] 'Brazilians Should Keep Slashing Their Rainforest', exactly that - plotting economic well-being against deforestation in some ~135 countries, showing that Brazil is pretty much exactly where we'd expect it to be given its economic development. Indeed, as Brazil's North, where the Amazon is, is much poorer than its urban South, it would make a lot of sense for them to keep slashing relatively unproductive rainforest for more productive agricultural/logging purposes. Also: 

"It's fair to say that almost everyone wants to preserve nature – but that nobody wants to do it at the expense of their children going cold or hungry. For quite a lot of the world’s remaining poor, planting trees isn’t their main priority – and shouldn’t be.
Let poor countries grow rich, and in due course they will, too, look after their forests."

• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine under another of their consistently brilliant titles: "Only The Rise of Capitalism Can Save The Brazilian Amazon Rainforests"
• Translated into Portuguese by the always-great Wallace Nascimento: 'Brasileiros devem continuar desmatando sua floresta tropical'
• [9] 'What Sweden Has Done Right On Coronavirus', oh boy did this spread. I made the case for Sweden's surprisingly calm and serious response to Corona - chill out, trust the experts, be careful, take care of one another - and have I heard it! Countless emails informing me in various degrees of persuasiveness how horribly ignorant I am; and a bunch of positive comments from people who matter. Very interesting experience - well worth a read.
  Oh, and you know you've made it when some a**faces on Reddit takes apart your article. 
• Discussed and featured in a Financial Times article by Camilla Cavendish. Life goals, accomplished. 
• Re-published on The Libertarian Republic's site. 
• Re-published on The Property Chronicle. 
• Re-published at Capitalism Magazine with title intact, for instance. Interesting!
• Republished, in English, on some Polish blog. 
• Shared at RealClearMarkets with the title "Sweden Fights C19 w/o Lockdown." No surprise there, as John Tamny has very much taken my side of things in this pandemic.
• Widely shared among Swedish Twitter and Facebook users - even features on the news site fPlus. 
• Listed and commented on by Karolinska, Sweden's premier medical university, in news compilation.
• Translated and published at the Italian site Miglio Verde. 

Mises

• [10] 'Even When They Are Wrong, We Can Learn From Understanding Others' Theories', ye pretty much that. Plus Assar Lindbeck impetus to learn from others and John Stuart Mill quotes about diversity of opinion. 
• Translated into Spanish and published by the Centro Mises. 
• Re-published at the Austrian Economics blog. 
• [11] 'Central Banks Are Running Out of Options', a snarky commentary on the impotence of central banks: they do every imaginable thing in their power, yet nothing happens. To no avail. Goodbye, Sayonara, see you never.  
• Shared on the Dutch site Veren of Lood.
• Re-published at the Austrian Economics blog. 
• Praised and re-published by Peter Schiff at his Schiffgold site (and echoed on the Danish financial site Finanz.dk). Very cool!
• Translated and re-published in Spanish at Centro Mises. 

A wonderful month of lots of cool and unfortunate development. Looking forward to April.