The 24th Cavalcade of Risk is up at The Digerati Life.
What’s a Cavalcade of Risk, you ask. Well, here you go:
Welcome to the Carnival of Risk #24, where we showcase articles that discuss risk in all its forms, particularly touching on the subjects of risk management, insurance, investing and other articles on business and financial risk.
Just basic stuff we should all understand a bit about.
Chris has a list of 60 who are to blame for the Virginia Tech massacre.
At Cafe Hayek Don Boudreaux reacts to a New York Review of Books review by singing the praises of globalization :
I doubt that McKibben knows what he’s talking about. That is, I doubt that he has any real appreciation for just how much our lives depend upon global commerce and industry. I doubt that he understands that each of us daily depends for our standards of living — indeed, for our very lives — on the creativity and efforts of tens of millions of people worldwide.
The good folks at Catallarchy pick up the drum beat:
It’s illuminating how expensive these experiments in buying local-only turn out to be. You never seem to hear about “working class” people rejecting global capitalism to prove some sort of ecopolitical holier-than-thou point. Maybe because they are too busy shopping at WalMart just trying to get by. Eliminating or reducing global trade would make their lives unbearably more difficult, if not impossible.
This is true enough. Pull the plug now on today’s global economy and things would look pretty bleak for anyone not currently “living locally.”
But, it is surprising to hear such supposedly strong free market supporters praising so loudly a structure so substantially built and maintained by the force of the state.
Boudreaux goes on to say:
…McKibben’s prescription would ironcially also likely require a vast, global government possessing awesome powers to force we humans to live — and to keep living — in local economies.
Right.
Just like our current version of a global economy is subsidized and maintained by vast government structures possessing awesome powers.
It seems pretty straight forward that if you increase the rate of human interaction the opportunity for wealth creation will also increase. Now there has been some additional quantification of this phenomena:
Cities have an almost magical ability, spurred by increased human interaction, to stimulate innovation and increase wealth.
If this is the case it would seem appropriate for state and local governments to focus their energies* on infrastructure elements that will increase human interaction. Instead they seem to spend a massive amount of effort on building more roads (an oft failed commons), on allegedly decreasing the time it takes to get from place to place.
Shouldn’t they, rather, be focusing on eliminating cars from large segments of cities so that barriers to interaction such as autococoons, freeways, ever lengthening trips to the store, and commutes are minimized?
Via Speedmaster.
Update: See this article on commuting in the New Yorker. Via Buzz Anderson.
*To the extent it is appropriate for them to focus on anything beyond public safety and maintaining a judicial system.
The Feline Theocracy is hosting this week’s Carnival of the Cats and Pet’s Garden Blog is hosting Weekend Cat Blogging #98.