Professor teaching class on vigilante justice is pepper-sprayed by vigilante seeking justice 
 
 By Scott Kaufman 
 
 Thursday, March 27, 2014 8:52 EDT 
 
 Yesterday, George Mason economist and popular blogger Tyler Cowen was pepper-sprayed and placed under citizen’s arrest by an unknown white male while teaching a class on the literature of vigilante justice. 
 
 According to police, around 3 p.m. on Wednesday a man entered the classroom and attempted to place Cowen under citizen’s arrest. The unidentified suspect entered the seminar room, jumped on the table, declared he was making a citizen’s arrest, and pepper-sprayed the professor. 
 
 Cowen ran into the hallway, and the suspect followed him. Two students in the hallway immediately detained the intruder until police arrived. 
 
 Students in the class itself were slow to react, because the course in session was on law and literature, and they were in the middle of a unit about vigilante justice, so the students assumed that the arrest was part of the class. 
 
 Cowen refused medical treatment, and tweeted the following shortly after the attack: 
 
 Back to work! (as usual)… — tylercowen (@tylercowen) March 26, 2014 
 
 Police are not sure why the Cowen was targeted, but commenters on the first story to report on the incident suggest that it could be because of the libertarian beliefs he advocates online. 
 
 Watch a report on the incident from WJLA below. 
 
 [Image via Cowen's faculty profile at George Mason University] ||||| Is Trump's Deal With Carrier A Form Of Crony Capitalism? 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Darron Cummings/AP Darron Cummings/AP 
 
 On Donald Trump's visit to Carrier in Indiana on Thursday, he mentioned a phone call that he made to the CEO of United Technologies, the air conditioning company's parent. As Trump describes it, that call led to Carrier announcing it will not move as many jobs to Mexico as it had planned. 
 
 "We can't allow this to happen anymore with our country. So many jobs are leaving and going to other countries, not just Mexico," Trump said. 
 
 Trump made it sound as though the decision to keep 1,000 Carrier jobs in the U.S. was done over a handshake. The decision appears to have involved a grab bag of concessions from Indiana, including a multiyear, $7 million incentive package. 
 
 It's not certain, but there may have been some strong-arm tactics involved, too. United Technologies is a defense contractor that gets a lot of money from the government. Earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders suggested that Trump should use that as leverage in negotiations to keep Carrier in Indiana. 
 
 Trump himself implied that such tactics will be part of his strategy to convince U.S. companies to remain in America. 
 
 "No. 1, we're going to treat them well, and No. 2, there will be consequences," he said. 
 
 Donald Evans, commerce secretary during George W. Bush's first term, says the deal definitely signals a change in approach between the White House and American businesses. But, he warns, dealing directly with each business as Trump did with Carrier is not likely to be a staple. 
 
 "You can't get involved in every business all across America. You have to create the environment for those businesses to do so well, and that's exactly what President-elect Trump has in mind," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. 
 
 But Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University who identifies as a libertarian, worries that under a Trump administration, a kind of "crony capitalism" — where companies that are good to a presidency are rewarded — will prevail. 
 
 "This to me is scary," Cowen tells Inskeep. "It indicates an environment where business decisions are now about how much you please the president." 
 
 Interview Highlights 
 
 On what kind of message the Carrier deal sends 
 
 Evans: You cannot do it all the time. You've got too many things on your plate. There will be isolated situations from time to time. This happens to be one of them that was brought up during the course of the campaign. [Trump] wanted everybody to know that ... as president, he's going to fight for jobs in America. Now, exactly how this all came down and what added incentives were thrown in there or not thrown in there, I have no idea. But I don't think it's a bad thing for the president to send a strong message to the workers of America that he's going to create the environment for them to do well right here and send that same message to the corporations of America. 
 
 Cowen: We're supposed to live under a republic of the rule of law, not the rule of men. This deal is completely nontransparent, and the notion that every major American company has to negotiate person-to-person with the president over Twitter is going to make all business decisions politicized. 
 
 We don't know exactly what the company is getting. There's plenty of talk that the reason Carrier went along with the deal was because they were afraid their parent company would lose a lot of defense contracts, so this now creates the specter of a president always being willing to punish or reward companies depending on whether or not they give him a good press release. 
 
 On whether there's a right or wrong way to interact with American corporations 
 
 Evans: Certainly over the long haul you can't get into the mode of picking winners and losers. The great hallmark of this country is we love to compete. And so what I think government's role needs to be, should be, will be under this president-elect, I'm confident, is create a playing field for our companies in America to compete not only here at home but around the world and provide that environment so that companies here in America are willing to stay here, employ more people and build their companies here in America instead of some other country in the world. 
 
 On United Technologies, Carrier's parent company 
 
 Cowen: They do a lot of defense contracting; it's at least 10 percent of their revenue. Carrier from the state of Indiana was already offered the tax break before the election. They turned it down. Now all of a sudden Trump is president, Bernie Sanders is telling Trump to threaten the defense contracts of the parent company. And now all of a sudden the company takes the deal, and Trump is known for being somewhat vindictive. 
 
 On crony capitalism 
 
 Cowen: Trump and Bernie Sanders, for all of their populist talk, their actual recipes in both case lead to crony capitalism ... a system where businesses who are in bed with the government and who give the president positive press releases are rewarded and where companies who oppose or speak out against the president are in some way punished. ||||| Drink up. (AP) 
 
 If you think you're doing a restaurant any favors by ordering dessert, you might want to think again. 
 
 Dessert can be delicious. And it can be profitable, too. But generally speaking, when diners extend their meal with slices of chocolate cake, cups of ice cream, and servings of crème brûlée, it can come at restaurants' expense. 
 
 "It's hard to make money on desserts in the restaurant business today," said Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University who has written extensively about the economics of eating out. "I don't think many [restaurants] benefit when people order them anymore." 
 
 There are many problems with dessert, but it all starts with one pretty simple truth: The restaurant industry is a place of razor thin margins, and dessert tends to offer one of the thinnest. 
 
 Food in general is tough to make money on. Restaurants have long relied on the mark-up they tack onto drinks, not grub, to boost profits. As food costs soar, that reality has only become more true, because there's a limit to how much people are willing to pay for different parts of their meal. For many mid-scale restaurants, that limit is $30 for entrees, no matter the ingredients, Todd Kliman noted recently in the Washingtonian. For desserts the ceiling is much lower, and much less flexible, says Cowen. 
 
 "Dessert needs good ingredients to taste good, but you can't psychologically convince people to pay even $20 for dessert," Cowen said. "You can't really go cheap on it, but you really can't charge extra either." 
 
 Forbes, for that very reason, noted in 2011 that dessert is often a great deal — for diners. 
 
 But it's also made serving it a growing pain for many restaurants. The cost of serving a house-prepared line of desserts includes employing a pastry chef and dedicated space in the kitchen to the craft. Some restaurants, instead of using pastry chefs, have opted to serve simpler desserts made by line cooks, while others "have given up entirely" and outsourced their sweets, according to Kliman. 
 
 Dessert is also problematic for restaurants because the course creates a bottleneck at the end of meals. At restaurants serving food in some of the country's busier cities, turnover is essential to their bottom line. Time is quite literally money. 
 
 "The more people they serve, the more revenue they get," Cowen said. "A lot of restaurant costs are fixed. Being able to serve more people, to sell them food, drinks, and especially expensive wine, is what varies." 
 
 Parties that might have finished their dinner in a little over an hour instead linger for closer to two when they opt for dessert. And they stay the extra 30 minutes while consuming only a fraction of what they did during the first part of the meal. It would be different if people ordered drinks more often alongside cake, but they often don't. It would change things if dessert wines were more popular, finer and more expensive, but they aren't, Cowen said. 
 
 "A cocktail brings in twice as much money as a dessert, and it doesn't hold up a table at the end of the meal. You have to turn the tables," Mark Bucher, who owns D.C. restaurant Medium Rare, told Kliman. 
 
 Dessert isn't, of course, problematic for all establishments. Restaurants with slower traffic, where open tables are less of a rarity, would obviously prefer to sell more food than sell no food. Higher-end restaurants, where prices are less elastic and people are willing to spend well over $20 for a dessert, aren't as affected either. It's the popular, mid-priced restaurants that don't benefit as much. 
 
 Desserts aren't going to disappear from restaurant menus. Too many people like them (rightfully so, I would say, though Cowen begs to differ). People also expect them, which makes eliminating them a risky endeavor. The price of alienating people is probably too great, especially in the age of Yelp reviews. 
 
 But the next time a waiter is being coy about showing you the dessert menu, know why: He probably would prefer it if you and your party asked for the check instead. Unless, that is, you might be interested in another round of drinks. 
 
 Related stories: 
 
 The Center for Science in the Public Interest's Xtreme Eating Awards went to nine "winning" chain restaurant meals especially high in calories, fat, sugar and salt. The Cheesecake Factory got three of them. (Tom LeGro/The Washington Post) 
 
 Where people around the world eat the most sugar and fat 
 
 The government is poised to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol in your diet 
 
 The Chipotle effect: Why America is obsessed with fast casual food
– Imagine you're in the middle of law class lecture on vigilantes, when a man bursts in, jumps on a desk, announces that he's making a "citizen's arrest," and then pepper sprays the professor. Because that's exactly what happened at George Mason University yesterday, and no, it wasn't a planned part of the lecture. The professor, popular libertarian economics blogger and occasional New York Times columnist Tyler Cowen, ran into the hall, and the intruder chased him, ABC 7 reports. Luckily, a student in the class was an off-duty police officer, and chased down the pepper sprayer, catching him at a building exit. Multiple charges are now pending against the sprayer. Twelve to 15 people, including Cowen, were treated for breathing issues, but Cowen was soon well enough to tweet that he was back to work, Raw Story points out.