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Berin Szoka, a self-described “cyber-libertarian” attorney who works for the DC-based Progress and Freedom Foundation, felt it necessary to backpedal recently on his criticism of the Federal Trade Commission. Szoka wrote on July 13 that he and his PFF colleagues are “actually big fans of the FTC’s core consumer protection mission: holding companies to their promises” (italics his). Szoka said the FTC needs “increased funding”—though not necessarily “increased powers”—to stay true to this core mission. As an example of the good the FTC does, Szoka noted,
the FTC sent a stern letter earlier this month to the company that is seeking to buy the subscriber info and photos and other assets of the now-defunct XY Magazine, which served primarily gay U.S. teens, warning them that the FTC would hold them to the terms of the privacy policy under which XY collected information from its subscribers.”
This is a great example of how the FTC can effectively use its existing authority to protect consumers against clear harms involved in the disclosure of truly sensitive data, sometimes even prophylactically—in this case, outing around 100,000 gay youths and young adults—collected by companies that make unambiguous promises to protect users’ data. This incident also illustrates how privacy law can evolve in an organic fashion from a growing body of such well-justified preemptive warnings, enforcement actions brought against truly bad actors, and ultimately court decisions that decide whether the FTC has properly weighed the interests at stake.
So we need the FTC to…keep the lifestyles of gay teens private? Um, okay. [click to continue…]
This Bloomberg interviewer says “Austrian thinkers” as if everyone knows what that means. Maybe everyone does!
A short film made by some Mises University students. See what you think.
The Economics of Private Legal and Defense Services: a 4-week online course with Dr. Robert P. Murphy, starting August 24.
Forty years ago, historian Ralph Raico completed his dissertation under the direction of F.A. Hayek at the University of Chicago. Its title masks its power and importance: The Place of Religion in the Liberal Philosophy of Constant, Tocqueville, and Lord Acton. It has been published for the first time by the Mises Institute, and this is not merely to honor a great historian and thinker.
The research contained within it amounts to a major contribution to public intellectual life of the United States at the time. The issue he addresses—the revelation of a different form of early liberalism, one heavily influenced by moral concerns and steeped in an older religious ethos—has major implications in our own time as well.
In response to conservative claims that the liberal tradition is essentially amoral and antinomian, Ralph Raico provides an extended discussion of three massively important figures in the history of liberalism for whom a religious orientation, and an overarching moral framework, was central for their thought: French Protestant Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), French Catholic Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), and Lord Acton (1834–1902).
All three were distinguished for: (1) consistent anti-statism, (2) appreciation for modernity and commerce, (3) love of liberty and its identification with human rights, (4) an conviction in favor of social institutions such as churches and cultural norms, and (5) a belief that liberty is not a moral end in itself but rather a means toward a higher end. What’s more, these thinkers are people whom conservatives have tended to revere if only in passing, but have they really studied their thought to see their radicalism, their deep love of freedom, and their true attachment to the old liberal cause?
Raico provides a detailed reading of their work in all these respects and shows that one need not embrace statism, and that one can be a consistent and full-blown liberal in the classical tradition, and not come anywhere near fulfilling the stereotype that conservatives were then creating of libertarians. Ours is a varied tradition of secularists, yes, but also of deeply pious thinkers, too. What drew them all together was a conviction that liberty is the mother and not the daughter of order.
Forty years later, it is striking how poignant Raico’s treatise remains. And it is fact: conservatives who were blasting away at libertarians at the time never saw this book. It is just now published. It’s this way with great books, classic studies of this depth: it remains as powerful and relevant now as ever.
From the WSJ, growth is lower than expected and retroactively revised downward.
Robert Murphy’s Lessons for the Young Economist is complete. While he finishes up the teachers’ manual, we’ve decided to post the Beta version of the typeset book for you to look through. Comments are more than welcome. I’ve never seen a better high-school text on economics. It’s a thrill to see his pedagogical brilliance at work. Please have a look.
Murphy is teaching a class this fall based on this text. To enroll, see the Mises Academy class page.
Nina Paley has created a wonderful page of IP-related comics. Here is a sample.
Understanding the true causes of the Depression, as well as the real economic record of the United States in the 1930s, is an essential ingredient in anyone’s economic and historical education. FULL ARTICLE by Thomas Woods
The history of capitalism as it has operated in the last two hundred years in the realm of Western civilization is the record of a steady rise in the wage earners’ standard of living. FULL ARTICLE by Ludwig von Mises
One of the United States’ most blatant examples of protectionism — so blatant that it is used as an illustration of the idea in some economics textbooks — is its sugar policy. FULL ARTICLE by Gary Galles
Apropos my post from a few days ago, I’ve been asked to write a weekly column for Forbes.com. My earlier Forbes contributions are here, and the new column–tentatively titled “Guerrilla Economics”–will start running soon. “Guerrilla Economics” is also the working title of a book manuscript I’ve worked on off and on for about a year and a half now; having a column of the same name will, I hope, help me finish it.
The French edition of Guido Hulsmann’s Ethics of Money Production has been published this very day!
Cet ouvrage propose une synthèse entre l’économie politique de la monnaie, la philosophie réaliste et la théologie catholique. Il aborde la compatibilité entre les préceptes moraux chrétiens et diverses constitutions monétaires, les conséquences de l’inflation permanente sur le plan de la spiritualité, les causes des crises monétaires et financières, l’utilité de la politique monétaire. Il esquisse enfin l’histoire monétaire de l’Occident des trois derniers siècles et conclut par un plaidoyer pour la réforme monétaire.
For the English edition of this book that grows ever more popular and influential, see it in the Mises store.
