Mutualist journal club

Hi MJC members,

For the next month or so, I won't be able to read much news or the publications that I've been monitoring, so I won't be posting here much.

I hope that other members will find interesting tidbits to report, but if there is not enough activity to keep your interest, please subscribe to the MJC's XML syndication (using an RSS feed-reader) so that you'll know when I resume posting.

-Adam

Environmental Economics: Ecological Economics blog:

The Env-Econ blog introduces us to the Eco-Econ blog. Here's what they say:

"We just added the Ecological Economics blog to our ENV-blogroll....If you think we here are too mainstream, rubes for the capitalist elite, bought and paid for, then ecological economics is for you."

I read one post at Eco-Econ (on Sustainable Growth), and it seems that their perspective is to view the economic system as a part of the larger (and physically limited) ecological system of the earth, wehreas Env-Econ simply seeks ways assess the value of natural resources and find policies that allow us to extract the most benefit from those resources. There are ideological implications to the Eco-Econ viewpoint; first in my mind, it suggests that we can't grow our way out of poverty (my interpretation).

Marginal Revolution: Do we need occupational licensing?: (the entire post is below, for comments go to the MR site)
-=--------------------------
"Alan Krueger writes:

In a new book, 'Licensing Occupations: Ensuring Quality or Restricting Competition?' (Upjohn Institute, 2006), Morris M. Kleiner, an economist at the University of Minnesota, questions whether occupational licensing has gone too far. He provides much evidence that the balance of occupational licensing has shifted away from protecting consumers and toward limiting the supply of workers in various professions. A result is that services provided by licensed workers are more expensive than necessary and that quality is not noticeably affected.

Read more here. I can't yet find this listed on Amazon.com, any pointers? Here is a pdf of part of the book. Here is a home page for the book.

More about that (blatant) scumbag Cunningham:

Marginal Revolution: Markets in Everything: Politicians: "What's most disturbing about this is how low the prices were, $50,000 for $1 million in contract value. Now let's remember Econ 101, what makes prices low? That's right, competition. So who was Cunningham competing with?"