Archive for Richard W. Fulmer
Richard Fulmer is a freelance writer from Humble, Texas.
The Keynesian Cure for Hunger: Eat More
For millennia people were starving to death and the solution was right there in front of them.
16Jan2012 | Richard W. Fulmer | 12 comments | ContinuedCavemen and Middlemen
Middlemen helped bring mankind out of caves and into prosperity; in return they have been reviled, persecuted, and killed.
9Jan2012 | Richard W. Fulmer | 13 comments | ContinuedBlowing Bubbles: Getting Ready for the Next Bust
Imagine you are a private in the army. Your sergeant orders you to dig a hole. When you finish, the sergeant is horrified to find that you have dug a hole. He dresses you down and then orders you to dig another hole. Insane? Welcome to today’s world of American banking. Over the course of [...]
4Jan2012 | Richard W. Fulmer | 16 comments | ContinuedThe Family Stone: Cavemen, Trade, and Comparative Advantage
Imagine a Stone Age family: Papa Stone, Mama Stone, and their two little pebbles. Suppose that, as befits pre-women’s-lib Neanderthals, Papa Stone is initially more competent at every prehistoric survival skill: hunting, fishing, nut-and-berry gathering, firebuilding, tool-making. Despite his superior talents, it does not make sense for other family members to sit around waiting for him to [...]
30Nov2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Infrastructure Delusion: Getting Nowhere Faster
Infrastructure does not an economy make. Highways and railroads, airports and seaports, communications towers and fiber-optic cables are essential for the flow of commerce, but it is the people, goods, and information moving over and through this infrastructure that are the heart of an economy. Overinvestment in roads, bridges, and airports means underinvestment in the [...]
26Oct2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 12 comments | ContinuedThe Family Stone: Cavemen, Trade, and Comparative Advantage
As poor as governments are at allocating known tasks, they are even worse at assigning tasks that don’t yet exist.
31Aug2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 29 comments | ContinuedA Simple Solution
There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong. —H. L. Mencken I have devised a simple plan for improving Americans’ health by drastically reducing everyone’s weight, thereby significantly increasing longevity and reducing medical costs. All we need to do is revalue the pound. Instead of a pound being [...]
24Aug2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Infrastructure Delusion
Goods, people, and information will not flow freely across a nation, regardless of the quality and extent of its infrastructure, if taxes and regulations block their flow.
15Aug2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 41 comments | ContinuedA Simple Solution
By overriding market money prices we deny ourselves important data about the country’s fiscal health.
11Apr2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 3 comments | ContinuedAn Impossible Job
Conventional wisdom has it that the more complex a nation’s economy, the more government oversight and regulation are needed to keep it from spinning out of control. It follows that government must grow in size and complexity along with the economy. Apparently, however, our government has become so vast and complex that it may have [...]
24Feb2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Paradox of the Welfare State
Welfare states face an inescapable paradox: The level of production needed to sustain a welfare state cannot be sustained by a welfare state. This paradox is created by policies that encourage the redistribution and consumption of wealth while discouraging its creation. In the face of such perverse incentives, living standards must fall even though, for [...]
22Sep2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 24 comments | ContinuedRegulatory Failure by the Numbers
Between the current financial mess and the debate over carbon dioxide emissions controls, there is a lot of talk about regulation these days. We are told, for example, that the recession would have been prevented if proper regulations had been in place. While it is true that (by definition) the “right” regulations would have prevented [...]
25Aug2010 | and Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedAre Profits Fit Only for Serfs and Slaves?
In their recent book, From Poverty to Prosperity, Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz relate that ancient Romans believed it honorable to gain wealth through battle and conquest, but dishonorable to profit by engaging in commerce. Such work was considered so demeaning that it was left to the children of freed slaves. Because of the associated [...]
29Jun2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 6 comments | ContinuedFifteen Things to Despise about Government Regulation
Between the current financial mess and the debate over carbon-dioxide emissions controls, there is a lot of talk about regulation these days. Any time government regulators try to do much more than lay out the basic rules of the game, unintended consequences and moral hazards rear their ugly heads.
11May2010 | and Richard W. Fulmer | 17 comments | ContinuedI, Slide Rule
I am a slide rule. For nearly three and a half centuries, my ancestors and I commanded the western scientific and engineering worlds. We could be found in humble shops, helping carpenters reckon areas and volumes; we fought on battlefields calculating trajectories for artillery officers; we were engineers’ constant companions, determining stresses, flow rates, velocities, [...]
20Apr2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 6 comments | ContinuedLegends of the Fall: The Real and Imagined Sources of Our Bubble Economy
Preface The Foundation for Economic Education is pleased to announce that Richard W. Fulmer of Humble, Texas, is the winner of the second annual Eugene S. Thorpe writing competition. Mr. Fulmer holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University and for over 20 years has worked as a systems analyst in [...]
24Mar2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 13 comments | ContinuedHow Dense Can They Get?
When it comes to power, energy density is the key. Solar power, wind power, and ethanol are so expensive because they are derived from very diffuse energy sources. It takes a lot of energy collectors such as solar cells, wind turbines, or corn stalks covering many square miles to produce the same amount of power [...]
5Jan2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 12 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
