The Occupy movement has been attacked from all angles, criticized for its lack of leadership and a singular purpose, and written off as an insignificant urban camping trip for a few neo-hippies. While those elements do exist within the various groups holding public land in cities across the United States, there is something which has [...]

Hierarchies are systematically stupid and inefficient, for the following reasons.

1. Hayekian information problems: The people in authority who make the rules interfere with the people who know how to do the job and are in direct contact with the situation. The people who make the rules know nothing about the work they’re interfering with. [...]

Dean Baker. The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer (LULU, 2006)

It is a myth that the rich, or market conservatives in the author’s lexicon, unremittingly favor the operation of free markets with absolutely no government intervention. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. [...]