Canada Post on strike

It is probably a bad idea to go on strike if the result is to convince people that your services are not very important anymore.

The right course is the same in Canada and the US. End the monopoly, privatize the organization, and toss some public money in to help with some but not all of the pension liabilities.

Play: Next Fall at Performance Network

We saw this excellent play on Friday night.

The reviews from annarbor.com and the Detroit Free Press give the substance. I am closer to the annarbor.com review in my overall view. This is one of the better productions we have seen at Performance Network over the past six years.

I do disagree with the annarbor.com reviewer on one point, and that is the wisdom of casting John Seibert, consistently one of the best actors in the PN pool, as the father. I thought he was perfect for the role and, indeed, that he gave the strongest performance in the show. But I also interpreted his character a bit differently than the two reviewers, both of whom seem to assume that he was clueless about what his son was up to. I read the father's history and dialogue in the play as indicating that he know, didn't approve, but loved his son too much to want to have it out about it.

The other actors are also very strong, particularly Andrew Huff as Adam and Barbara Coven as Arlene.

Recommended.

Gay marriage in NY

Kudos to NY for legalizing gay marriage, and doing so via the legislature rather than the courts. This is a big victory for freedom, equality and human decency.

Plus a bonus bit from the Onion (via various economist pals on FB).

Now if we could just get the government out of the marriage business entirely ...

Police misbehavior in Rochester

This story about police misbehavior in Rochester, NY nicely illustrates the broader danger associated with having so many laws, many of them mutually inconsistent, that everyone is breaking the law all the time. In that situation, whenever the authorities, at whatever level, decide to misbehave like the police in Rochester do in this story, it is easy for them to punish whomever they want to punish.

In a well-run city, all of the officers involved would already be fired. I am certain they are not.

Ezra Klein on Inside Job

I'm not usually the biggest fan of Ezra Klein, but this post on the movie Inside Job seems right on target to me.

Returns to human capital

UM graduate student Jason Kerwin on the returns to human capital investment in Malawi.

Perhaps the most stunning figure in Jason's post is the fraction of the population in Malawi with education beyond high school, which is less than one percent. And we are now more than three decades after the end of the colonial period.

Ban the job-killing ATMs

A funny video from the Media Research Center.

The only downside is that neither the MRC nor the people they ask for signatures seem to realize that the "M" in "ATM" stands for "machine", so that saying "ATM machine" over and over makes one look silly.