Market Power

Calling Dr. Coase....

From the KC Star:

Gawkers come by the busload to see the Prairie Village house that owner Mike Babick has turned into a Christmas spectacle over the past 47 years.

Children gape at the thousands of twinkling lights. Grownups stare with joy and amazement at the hundreds of holiday figures and the robotic elves toiling away.

“Elves with hammers,” Babick said. “Elves with saws. Elves with candy canes. Elves with...”

Elves aplenty. Reindeer out the wazoo.

Yet Babick’s house at 7611 Falmouth St. may no longer be a must-see stop on the unofficial holiday lighting tour of Kansas City.

This week the Prairie Village City Council passed an ordinance that, Babick says, might make it unaffordable for him to carry on the tradition this Christmas. And he’s mighty bitter about it.

“It stinks,” he said Tuesday. “They’ve killed Christmas for me. Just killed it.”

City officials say that was not their intent in passing regulations Monday night that would require permits for any “special event” lasting five days or more that “is likely to or does in fact generate crowds ... sufficient in size to obstruct, delay or interfere with the safe and orderly movement of ... traffic.”

This is a good example of why externalities are a two-way street.  Babick's display is a safety hazard and creates annoyances for neighbors, but clamping down on it keeps him from enjoying Christmas as he sees fit.

10 Reasons why Rush rules

The article is about two months old, but I just ran across it this AM.  Here are two reasons why Rush rules.

5) They've written songs that will melt your mind.

Why record a three-minute song when you can write an 18-minute, six-part suite instead? Since the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, scientists are now using their free time to study Neil Peart's unique drumming style. Probably. 

GEDDY: "When we recorded Hemispheres [1978], we ended up writing things that were hard to record, like La Villa Strangiato. We tried recording it in one take, every day for a week, but we couldn't do it. We had to record it in three parts and edit it together. As we got better, that happened less and less. Either that, or we just lowered our own expectations! [laughs]"

6) They don't take themselves too seriously.

GEDDY: "We've always had a good sense of humour. Even in 1975, we were writing songs that were tongue-in-cheek, like By-Tor And The Snow Dog [Fly By Night]. People thought everything we did was so heavy and serious, but that song is about two dogs in space. What's serious about that?"

 On that last part...

 

Seven reasons to stop drinking diet soda

Here's one for the ladies that I didn't know about.

Here's something you didn't know about your diet soda: It might be bad for your kidneys. In an 11-year-long Harvard Medical School study of more than 3,000 women, researchers found that diet cola is associated with a two-fold increased risk for kidney decline. Kidney function started declining when women drank more than two sodas a day. Even more interesting: Since kidney decline was not associated with sugar-sweetened sodas, researchers suspect that the diet sweeteners are responsible.

Link here.  I do not care for diet soda and do not drink it.  I prefer my sodas sweetened with real sugar, not corn syrup.