The Guardian Review has an interesting feature today on Jane Jacobs. It focuses on her book The Death and Life of American Cities, but Cities and the Wealth of Nations meant more to me and of course both anticipated and helped create the revival of recent years in urban economics.

Meanwhile, Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times writes about Google Books and asks a very good question. He begins:

Sceptics often ask of new government programmes: if it is so
worthwhile, why is the private sector not doing it already? A similar
question can be asked of companies claiming to be acting for the
general good: if the public needs it, why is the government not doing
it already?

If it will cost just $125m (the amount Google has paid) to run a non-profit book-rights
registry that
would  distribute royalties to authors, why isn't the public sector doing it? This is an activity which it seems clear should be part of the global public domain discussed in the previous post on this blog.