Briggs Armstrong writes an excellent post on blog.Mises.org about the “regression fallacy” and the fact that so many people consider the boom phase of the past decade to have been “normal”:

There is nothing normal about a recession; likewise, a boom phase is equally abnormal. During the boom phase no one asked when the banks would return to normal lending practices.

[...]

It is important that we are aware of our tendency to make this mistake. If the goal for the economy is to return to “normal” then we must recognize that the last several years have been an exceptional boom, not normal or average.

But my wife added an important twist to Armstrong’s observation. She pointed out to me that many people were asking exactly the right questions during the dot-com bubble. And while there were people back then who insisted that the rules had changed (there always are such people), the general public didn’t seem especially shocked when that particular bubble popped.

So what’s the difference? She suggests that a boom in a new technology will be looked on with more suspicion than a boom in something as basic and familiar as housing.

I, of course, discovered the Austrians during this post-dot-com/post-9/11 boom, so I was plenty aware that we were in another classic bubble, but apparently far fewer people thought so in 2004 than had thought so in 1999.

It’s the invisibility of the boom period that makes people open to New Deal nonsense when the bubble pops. All bubbles are bad, but perhaps tech bubbles are somewhat less bad.

Two cheers for cultural elitism.

This is from About.com’s art-history mailing:

Do I Have to Like Everything?

This is an awfully frequently Frequently Asked Question that makes me sad and angry. How can The Arts expect to drum up popular support (read: ask for increased public funding) when many Arts writers seem hell-bent on alienating the tax-paying public? It’s arrogant and stupid, I tell you. In a better world, art should be presented to all humans as human friendly, by humans who are capable of BEING friendly.

So is it human friendly to coerce funding, so long as you make it feel inclusive? Or should we conclude from this note that About.com’s art-history guide is hell-bent on alienating fiscal conservatives and principled libertarians?

I have the same frustration with a lecture series I just finished listening to on classical archaeology. Hardly a lecture passed without an appeal for more “enlightened” government policies — meaning a disregard for property rights. Apparently an interest in the physical evidence of ancient cultures requires a paternalistic philosophy and a preference for expansive government.

(And of course, the underlying problem in both examples is the unquestioned assumption that anyone interested in education must have left-wing politics.)

Come on!

Seriously, how hard is this distinction?

Obama Change in Stem-Cell Policy Imminent

“U.S. President Barack Obama will soon issue an executive order lifting an eight-year ban embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor, President George W. Bush, a senior adviser said on Sunday.” (Reuters, Sunday)

Correction: The ban wasn’t on research; it was on tax-financing of research.

FEE Timely Classic

“Some Thoughts on Taxation” by George C. Leef

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have, for years, thought the ban was on the research itself.

(Can you blame this one on my not reading newspapers? Apparently the newspapers perpetuate the confusion.)