1000 CASTAWAYS: FUNDAMENTALS OF ECONOMICS is now available at Amazon!

1000 CASTAWAYS: FUNDAMENTALS OF ECONOMICS is now available at Amazon! 1000 CASTAWAYS: FUNDAMENTALS OF ECONOMICS by Clint Ballinger 

New Posts at http://clintballinger.edublogs.org/

CLINT BALLINGER On good urbanism, sane economics, & problems in the social sciences

Links to recent posts

The State System and Mercantilist Policies: Part I of Mercantilism and the Rise of the West 

Mercantilism – Rejected by both the Left and the Right: Part II of Mercantilism and the Rise of the West

I HAVE MIGRATED HERE

Clint Ballinger, On good urbanism, sane economics, & problems in the social sciences

New Posts are over at Open Salon

While I am in China, all new posts are at Academic Scribblers on Open Salon.
A few recent posts:
China and Scale (Population)
JANE JACOBS ON THE EUROZONE CRISIS

Calling all Economists: A Case Study for Privatization of Government Functions?

I was visiting Poland last Christmas and saw a stack of thick sheet-metal cut into squares on the table. I asked my hosts what they were. Turns out they are used to make mail heavier. 

This sounded sufficiently Kafkaesque - or perhaps Alice in Wonderland-ish - to me (and reminded me of something like Harrison Bergeron for letters as well) to make me think: Why in the world...?

So they explained: Private mail companies are not allowed to carry letters below a certain weight. Normal letters are thus reserved for the national postal service. But apparently the private companies are so much faster that people are willing to insert metal weights into their mail to bring them to "package" weights eligible for private service and pay the substantial difference for the faster service. I observed that this is a very common practice. 

Now, a disclaimer - I believe there are fundamental mistakes with "free market" critiques of government services, particularly networks of all kinds (and health care). They fail to take into account that the value to society of whole networks, even with many unprofitable lines, is far greater than the sum of its parts. 

But seeing these metal weights I couldn't help but think that this is an economist's wet dream classroom example of the free market. I am sure there is more to the story but I was not able to follow up on the situation in greater detail. If any one else is, it could make an interesting case study of economic theory. On the face of it it supports privatization of public services, although again, I think there might be something more going on.    

In China

If my posts seems rushed and erratic - I am currently behind the "Great Firewall of China" w curtailed net access. Here to learn firsthand more about the economy here.
I can get on blocked websites (which includes Blogger, Facebook, Wordpress, Youtube) about 5 minutes a day. Problem is, I don't even know WHICH 5 minutes. So it is really erratic. 
Really interesting so far. 

Anyway, being here is greatly limiting what I can get done on this project. 
But I think in the long run it is worth it to better understand important aspects of the world economy. I will report when I can, although my focus on this blog is a long term/large scale look at the social sciences and not specifically global economics. OK, I better hit "publish" while I can, I have already been signed in to Blogger for a few minutes, and my Facebook just went down, which means the rest will soon as well. 
More later, Clint