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Comment by arjunnarayan | Hacker News Reader

This opinion is both extraordinary and extremely significant. Richard Posner is probably the most prolific legal intellectual not on the supreme court. He co-writes, along with Gary Becker (Nobel Prize winner in Economics) this excellent blog http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Posner is the author of the 4th most cited Law Review article in the field of intellectual property law[1]. Most telling of all is this statistic: "As of 2000, Judge Posner was the most often-cited legal scholar of all time with 7,981 citations, nearly 50 percent more than anyone else" [2]. He retains that position in 2012.

[1] - William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law, 18 J. Legal Stud. 325 (1989). [2] Fred Schapiro & Michelle Pearse, The Most Cited Law Review Articles of All Time, Michigan Law Review 2012.

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An excellent quote from Posner:

"The institutional structure of the United States is under stress. We might be in dangerous economic straits if the dollar were not the principal international reserve currency and the eurozone in deep fiscal trouble. We have a huge public debt, dangerously neglected infrastructure, a greatly overextended system of criminal punishment, a seeming inability to come to grips with grave environmental problems such as global warming, a very costly but inadequate educational system, unsound immigration policies, an embarrassing obesity epidemic, an excessively costly health care system, a possible rise in structural unemployment, fiscal crises in state and local governments, a screwed-up tax system, a dysfunctional patent system, and growing economic inequality that may soon create serious social tensions. Our capitalist system needs a lot of work to achieve proper capitalist goals." [1]

[1] http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2012/06/capitalismposner.h...

That post is an excellent read. He gets right to the heart of the biggest challenge facing the US right now. However there are no solutions put forward, a job which is unfortunately left up to the politicians.

Well, the solution is to elect politicians who are capable of understanding those concepts while having the ethical character necessary to act on behalf of our society.

Unfortunately, the electorate is mostly interested in Lindsay Lohan's latest car wreck and Miley Cyrus's engagement.

He missed talking about our massive trade deficit, which is the cornerstone of many of the other financial problems we have. Obviously cheap prices is a valid goal for an economy to work well but without good paying jobs then it barely aids the economy as a whole. Is it any wonder our fiscal problems are so great including, but not limited to, our currency being devalued internationally.

How many dollars can you pack into foreign FOREX reserve accounts?

well, this was 30 years in the making...

Everyone should read the second paragraph of that article, so here is a link: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/IPCoop/89land1.html -- it is one of the baselines for intelligent consideration of the subject, pro or anti.

(relevant jargon ref: "public good" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good)

Why is Posner NOT on the Supreme Court?

He's too opinionated. I'm serious. Ever since Bork, the trend has been towards finding nominees who have left the smallest possible paper trail of potentially damning legal opinions. And so you're left with the farcical confirmation hearings of e.g. Elena Kagan. The majority of sitting justices are/were not brilliant jurists or legal scholars for this very reason.

I would add he is old enough that the appointment would have relatively limited value. In an increasingly politicized court, it might be better for a president to appoint someone with limited intellectual weight who will be a reliable (liberal or conservative) vote on the supreme court for a long time than a brilliant scholar who might step down in a few years, at least from a political power standpoint.

Thanks for the link. Posner and Becker exude knowledge and understanding of how societies and economies function.

To me, it's strange/sad how as a society we elect politicians that couldn't even understand that blog much less resonate with the ideas in there or (FSM forbid) author that level of scholarship.

Instead, we get endless class warfare demagoguery and debates on gay marriage. We pay so much for our government and are so poorly served.

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