RAEpstein

Too many to count. But the one on my first day is still the best. I started to teach future interests to 92 students at USC, and ten minutes in, one Marvin Garrett raises his hand and says "You don't know us and we don't know you, but I can say for every person in this class that no one has understood a word you have said." Tough stuff. So I answered contritely, "Can you ask a question so that I can clarify." His response wqs unforgiving. "To ask a good question, you have to know something, which we don't. My advice to you is slow down and start over." Out went the notes (which I never brought to class again. I started to look at students for signs of abject incomprehension. I am not perfect, as generations can testify, but at least I don't use power point..

No.

All the branches have become too powerful, as it were, because there is too much government. But the real point is that the judiciary has often been too weak and mushy because it will not strike down the excesses of other branches of government. This is especially true with takings where land use control programs have thwarted sensible development at great human cost everywhere—only a modest overgeneralization. Remember that Kelo was a public outrage because the courts failed to intervene to protect her house on a site that is now a garbage dump,

Whoops. I do the cross word puzzle, slowly, write something, badly, go out with my family, frequently, and get outdoors. Not exciting. but no one would want to confuse me with Teddy Roosevelt.

No. This is a question that comes up all the time. the number of people who think that the belief in markets requires that you breath polluted air is all too large. The market argument is that between consensual parties the government should not regulate wages and terms. But externality control is an essential party of the overall libertarian theory, and that means control of nuisances. The issue is pretty clear, but in the last two weeks two distinguished professors from Texas and Harvard made the same mistake. It is a case where it is easier to mischaracterize a system than to understand it. Nuisance law has many distinctive remedial features and at times requires collective enforcement of the basic norm against invasion. But there is nothing about the theory which says that the way to make people happy and prosperous is to choke them.