/Sunday, November 19, 2006
A tribute to one of the greatest economist of this century, Milton Friedman:
I spent most of my
"time to read-a-book" moment in Turkey reading Friedman's book "Freedom to Choose", co-written by him and his wife, Rose Friedman. Was really intrigued by some of his ideas in the book and how fervent he is about a utopian world based on a free economy. It was then, I realised how old he really was, and I was sorta-anticipating his death somehow.......he's 94.
It's silly to anticipate death...but sometimes I would imagine LKY's death, Madonna's death; and imagine how their funeral would be like. Heh. Should be quite a big thing.
I
"sorta borrowed" the book from Hobbit's host family, by the way, haha. If you are wondering where I managed to get an english book in Turkey. Cos their brilliant Turkish daugther had a
fantastic array of literature of-all-sorts in her room.
One should also be prepared to jettison any dammm thing taken for granted now and be prepared to embrace and look at the world in another perspective.Im not becoming a skeptic of all sorts now. But it's always good to imagine living in a system that is totally different from what we have now. And imagine how things would be like:Something for car owners to think about.
Overview of Gabriel Roth's Book, Roads in the Market Economy*
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29992.html"Both roads and telecommunications are subject to congestion at specific times and places. However, the telecommunications sector--unlike the roads sector--has learned how to avoid the extremes of congestion and over-investment. It does this by adopting pricing rules and investment criteria developed in market economies to make the best use of scarce resources. In a nutshell: those who provide telecommunications services raise prices at periods of peak demand, and the increased revenues generated thereby attract the required additional investment to expand peak-period capacity.Roth's premise is that we would have much more user-friendly roads if the road system were set up on commercial principles more like the telecommunications system's. Specifically, this would mean that, like telecom companies, road providers should have owners; be financially self-supporting; be treated the same by government, whether investor-owned or government-owned; receive their revenue directly from users (rather than through the government); and operate to common standards, to make interconnection simpler. Roth explains what we know about the costs of road use, both direct and indirect (accidents, congestion, pollution, etc.), and how to understand these costs in an economically literate manner. He looks at arguments for and against various ways of pricing road use, including the politically contentious issue of how to charge trucks for the greater wear and tear they impose on most roads. Roth also reviews the world's experience to date with direct road pricing and is realistic about the political difficulties of introducing pricing where people have become accustomed to thinking of road use as "free." Road pricing generally means charging road users at the time and place of use--in other words, charging tolls. Singapore is the only major city that has attempted "congestion pricing"--a form of road pricing whose aim is to control traffic congestion. Under Singapore's relatively crude system, drivers wishing to enter the central business district during the morning rush hour must buy and display a sticker on the car's window. Drivers of cars without valid stickers are fined. ............This is an important and thought-provoking book. It is bizarre that Americans have so uncritically accepted a central-planning model for our transportation infrastructure, while developing the world's best telecommunication infrastructure using a (largely) free market model. Indeed, one of the unexpected delights of this book is a here-tofore unpublished essay, included as an epilogue, by Milton Friedman and Daniel Boorstin, dating from the early 1950s, proposing both private ownership and market pricing for roads. As usual, Friedman was way ahead of most of the rest of us. Fortunately, with the publication of Gabriel Roth's book, these ideas will gain the kind of hearing they have long deserved. "
it just ain't right @ Sunday, November 19, 2006
