As I have been writing a little less than normal, I have something of a backlog of posts. I have promised a number of topics and never gotten to them. However, to maintain my sanity, and to keep myself from having to write on subjects which may no longer be relevant, I am wiping the slate clean (up to last Friday), with two exceptions (to be mentioned later), and starting fresh.

On the other hand, over the weekend, and this morning, I did make a promise to write three posts, so I already have a few commitments. In order to help me (and my readers) keep track of those promises, I am going to write a short list of the posts I have promised.

1. From my comments on "My Message to Congress", an essay on our tendency to feel little incentive to change institutions which have been around for a long time. In some ways, this makes sense, as the name "conservative" suggests we should venerate the, well, venerable. And I did mention the benefit of slow changes in "Conservatism, Incremental Change and Federalism" and "In Praise of Slow Changes", as well as respect for tradition in "In Defense of Standards" and "Addenda to "In Defense of Standards"", and outlining the dangers of rapid, idealist change in "Utopianism and Disaster". On the other hand, conservative is a bit of a misnomer, as I argued in "The Political Spectrum", and sometimes granting too much respect to simple persistence can lead to bad ideas remaining around forever. (Eg. public education, medical licensing, prescription drug controls, public roads, and a host of other sacred cows it is hard to even suggest challenging)  In my post I will look at this human tendency toward inertia when confronting old, familiar institutions, and weight the pros and cons and ask how we should treat long established beliefs and practices. (UPDATE: You can read some earlier thoughts on a similar topic in "My Mistake". In it I discuss the conflict between wanting to do away with bad government policies and the need to make changes gradually to avoid introducing yet more problems.)

2. From my comments on "I Am Confused by Media Headlines", an essay on the likely outcomes of Obama's attempts to inflate us out of our recession. It is a topic I have addressed repeatedly, I know, but I have also repeatedly promised to pull everything together in one essay and haven't. I especially want to discuss the role that perception and confidence play in currency phenomena, as it is often overlooked, but in this specific case I think the lack of confidence in Obama, especially among investors and the financial community, may be doing him a lot of harm and making the recession more profound than it would be under another president. (UPDATE: I may hold off on writing this until I write Bad Economics Part 7 -- see #5 below -- defining inflation, as it will save me the trouble of defining it in this essay, and will keep me from duplicating efforts. Also, the bad economics post will likely refute many arguments that will be raised in criticism of this post, so will probably be a good preface to this one.)

3. From my comments on "An Interesting Refutation", an article on health care reform if the "public option" is omitted. Basically, drawing on my older post "The Absurdity of Mandatory Insurance", "A Potential Problem With Universal Insurance" and "Redefining Insurance... To Actually BE Insurance", and my arguments about vouchers and their harmful effects in "You Don't Drown in a Glass of Water - Vouchers Revisited", "Why Vouchers are not the Answer" and "Never Ascribe To Evil, A Discussion of Education", I will argue that even simply mandating everyone carry insurance will inevitably destroy medical care as well. (One can also draw a parallel to states with mandatory auto insurance, which I may touch upon.) The point being that the government need not take an active role in medicine to take over. Mandatory coverage alone will be enough, and if we add mandates concerning coverage (eg. "Preexisting Conditions", " High Cost of Medical Care","Medical Reform, An Overview") then the government control will be felt even more rapidly.

4. Which brings me to my first exception. As I mentioned several times, most recently in "More to Come... Really, I mean It", I want to write a post explaining the true costs, including in terms of pollution, of many supposedly "green" solutions. It is a topic I have mentioned before in terms of a few specific cases, but this time I hope to write more generally about the way that "green" energy often simply moves pollution around, keeping it out of sight, but not reducing it, and sometimes even increasing it. I will also briefly look at the feasibility of running a "green" economy, without all this hidden pollution. (See "G-d Save Us From Simple Solutions", "A Question For Those Worried About Climate Change", "Running an Economy on Compost, Saw Grass and Solar Cells", "How Green is Green Energy?", "A Thought On Solar Energy" and "Bad Economics Part 1") Tentative title: How Green Is My Energy?

5. And then my second exception. As I have been promising, there are at least 5 more installments to the "Bad Economics" series. They were listed in "", but as the numbering has changed, here is the revised list (from "Bad Economics Part 5"):

6. The Necessity of Farm Subsidies and Price Supports
7. What is Inflation?
8. The Truth About Monopolies (A Follow Up to Part 2)
9. Bankruptcies, Bruises, Fevers and Extinctions
10. The Role of Profits and Advertising in the Free Market (follow up to "Cutting "Costs"", "Misunderstanding Profits" and "Two Examples of "Inefficiency" in Capitalism")

The numbers, as always, may change as I write them in a different sequence, but for the moment this is the definitive list. For those interested, the current Bad Economics posts are:

Bad Economics Part 1 - A discussion of how prices disprove theories of resource depletion
Bad Economics Part 2 - A debunking of the many theories based on "defective" or "damaging" competition
Bad Economics Part 3 - An examination of the many absurd claims about deregulation
Bad Economics Part 4 - An examination of problems with economic studies and empirical evidence
Bad Economics Part 5 - An examination of consumer protection and the harm it does to consumers and others

You can also read them in reverse order, starting with part 5, as each post contains links to the previous chapters.

And that is the end of my list of upcoming articles.

I don't know when I will get to all of them, or even if I will write every single one. But I will try my best, as I think all the posts listed above will be of interest to at least most of my regular readers.