On Cafe Hayek, George Mason economics professor Russ Roberts dissects from a libertarian’s point of view a CNN story about the government’s recently announced National Broadband Plan. The initiative is aimed at providing every American “affordable access to robust broadband service,” among other goals.

Says it all

Here’s an amazing story from CNN because it’s so ordinary. It’s about a top-down government initiative that sounds good – giving more broadband access to Americans. Who’s against more Americans getting broadband? The FCC has a plan to get it done. Go Broadband!

So here’s the story.

From the Library of Economics and Liberty, libertarian Bryan Caplan, Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, offers 15 books that influenced his thinking: 1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. While I ultimately didn’t learn much of substance, this book got me very excited about about ideas. [...]

Some of you have no doubt seen the “Fear the Boom and Bust” video featuring the rap stylings of economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek, two economists with diametrically opposed viewpoints. To put the dispute in its most simplistic terms, Keynes thought government intervention was the only way out of economic downturns, and Hayek…not so much. (Think Paul Krugman vs. Ron Paul to get a picture of two contemporary acolytes of these schools of thought.)

In Wikipedia’s entry on Keynes, the section “Economics: out of favour 1979–2007” is followed by Economics: the Keynesian resurgence of 2008–2009.