General

Re: The Laws

Clayton — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 09:23:19 GMT

Bastiat's Law: "Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference - the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee."

(Bob) Murphy's Law: The truth is - to a first order of approximation - the exact opposite of whatever Paul Krugman says.

Voltaire's Law: Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value — zero.

Clayton's Iron Law of Human Behavior: No matter how stupid, if it can be done, someone will do it... and even if it can't be, someone will try.

Clayton -

Re: The Laws

Malachi — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 03:35:33 GMT

Hicks Law: time taken to make a decision increases in proportion to the square of the number of applicable choices.

Focard Transfer Principle: every contact leaves a trace. In criminal forensics this is expressed as a triangle- victim, scene, and perpetrator. Each will take some of the other two, and leave some of itself on them as well.

Re: The Laws

Conza88 — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 03:25:04 GMT

Woods Law #4: People with the worst taste in music blast it the loudest in public.

https://www.facebook.com/ThomasEWoods/posts/10151387562655726

Re: The Laws

Conza88 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:45:17 GMT

Other discussion. Here too.

Re: The Laws

Conza88 — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 05:09:29 GMT

Bit of explanation of some of these laws here. Rothbard's sociological laws.

Adding:

This leads me to North's law of bureaucratic expansion:

Any outrageous interpretation of a bureaucratic rule, if widely resisted by the public, will lead to an increased appropriation for the bureaucracy within two fiscal years.

There is an exception.
If the enforcement of the interpretation requires major expenditures for new equipment, the process will take only one fiscal year.

Re: The Laws

Hard Rain — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:26:15 GMT

O'Rourke's Law: "When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."

Re: The Laws

E. R. Olovetto — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:11:44 GMT

I have a whole book of these, The Rules of the Game by Paul Dickson.

I happened to open it up and look at this one first.

Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Governments: No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Some of them are quite weird.

Morley's Conclusion: No man is lonely while eating spaghetti.

Sattlinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.

Re: The Laws

Merlin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:12:16 GMT

Murphy's Law: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

Re: The Laws

Bank Run — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:53:54 GMT

I've got one for protectionism but I don't know who said it.

When one goes to protect one group and does this at the expense of all groups, or individuals, he rarely helps that group better than a market could have otherwise.

Re: The Laws

Bank Run — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:21:04 GMT

Bank Run's law if interventionism:

Any highly regulated market inevitably produces shoddy goods.

Re: The Laws

Conza88 — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 04:38:57 GMT

Lew Rockwell: "The pattern repeats itself so often that it almost seems to be a law of history: the radicals who change history must do so over the resistance of the moderates, who claim to be friendly to the same cause, but somehow always end up on the side of established interests." (Moderates and Radicals)

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Re: The Laws

Conza88 — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:59:31 GMT

Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time allotted for its completion."

Re: The Laws

Justin D — Wed, 27 May 2009 17:35:26 GMT

I feel no sympathy for your laziness which you cover and disguise as woes and ills (to welfare queens)
Theft fuels royalty in Democracy
The only social responsibility, is Personal Responsibility
The man who works on Sunday, has a job on Monday.

- Justin DuBois

Re: The Laws

nirgrahamUK — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:59:19 GMT

also;

Leslie Chapman, Your Disobedient Servant (London: Chatto and Windus, 1978). A fascinating first-hand account of the mechanics of Friedman's first law—why things cost twice as much when governments do them. The author was a British bureaucrat who tried to reduce the costs of his part of the bureaucracy by modest measures such as not heating buildings that nobody occupied. He succeeded technically, reducing costs by about 35% with no reduction in output, but failed politically; he is no longer a bureaucrat.

Re: The Laws

nirgrahamUK — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:57:46 GMT

its not serious, its meant as a quirk, so whenever we hear about studies that are broadly in line with the outcome we can say ,Friedman's Law !

he writes :

Skeptical readers may want evidence for my claim that it costs any government twice as much as it should to do anything. A domestic example is the Post Office; private postal companies make a profit delivering third-class mail at half what the Post Office charges to deliver it a loss. A foreign example is Russia's government-run economy, which invests twice as much of its GNP as we did at a comparable period in our development to achieve the same growth rate. Japan invests privately at the same rate as Russia and gets twice Russia's growth rate.