I recently received the new Bruno Leoni book, Law, Liberty, and the Competitive Market, published by Transaction and sponsored by Alberto Mingardi’s Istituto Bruno Leoni. In addition to an interesting foreword by Richard Epstein and introduction by Carlo Lottieri, the book contains English translations of several articles by Leoni, mostly originally published in Italian in the early 1960s. Leoni was tragically murdered when he was only 54 (by a client, if i remember correctly). Until now, the primary work of Leoni’s available in English was his magisterial Freedom and the Law (this work greatly influenced my Legislation and the Discovery of Law in a Free Society). I am looking forward to finishing the book. Lottieri, Mingardi and co. are to be commended on bringing out the work of this important liberal thinker.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/9361/new-leoni-book-law-liberty-and-the-competitive-market/
New Leoni Book: Law, Liberty, and the Competitive Market
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Here we have a wonderful collection of writings by Bruno Leoni, the first in English after Freedom and the Law. It shows his late Rothbardian influences, his affinities with Mises, and what he learned from Hayek. An extremely important book.
But look at the price: $50 for a 241 page hardback. Unaffordable! I assume as part of the “contract,” the rights to all this stuff will be tied up for a billion years (or least long after we are all dead). That means no online edition and very low circulation. And no competition allowed, ever.
It is as good as dead, just as it is published.
How terribly terribly tragic for Leoni, and how tragic for all of us.
Let me make an appeal to all of you: please don’t do this. We have lost so much great writing and so many great ideas to this monstrous copyright machine. We cannot afford to lose any more.
@Jeffrey,
Since when need should set the price?
It would be an enormous tragedy for the copyright industry if truly valuable works which have been relegated to obscurity in this way were to be scanned and PDFd by intellectual-property pirates and made available anonymously on P2P networks, presumably with some kind of tag or other indication which would allow indigent Austrian scholars to find and download the materials more easily.
A real tragedy, and I shudder at the thought of what lawlessness this would engender. I of course would never do such a thing myself nor do I advocate that anyone else do so. However it does have the sharp, tangy air of inevitability about it. Just saying.
Leoni, tragically, was murdered by a tenant in a building that he owned, presumably in Pavia, Italy.
I neglected to say that I am delighted to see that this book is available, particularly as I don’t read Italian. I shall read it at the earliest opportunity.
What would it take for Mises Institute or Mises.org to setup an “Unlock the Works” fund for the express purpose of purchasing the copyrights of this and other suppressed works, and then re-release them under Creative Commons?
A donation by members on behalf of a particular work, or for any work in general could be made via the internet. the fund could save up the money in gold accounts, say at Kitco or some other reputable firm….
Just a thought. Seems the publishers are sitting on these things and perhaps don’t know what they have. If they are not producing anything, or just expensive short run copies, then they don’t recognize the value of the work. There are foundations that may contribute as a part of their own chartered purpose, including some of the foundations that support public radio.
I’d be happy to chip in on such a fund.
The tragedy of copyright is that it takes a wonderful capitalistic and cooperative act like publishing and adds a monopolistic edge of coercion, so while it is wonderful that Transaction is publishing this, it is not wonderful that no one else can also publish this in a more affordable and accessible edition. This is a very serious problem for the dissemination of idea.
I worried that something like this would happen to Selgin’s book on gold but we ended up buying enough advanced copies to make it market viable.
i’m quite a big follower of ibl, and listen to most of their podcasts.
i think they tend to be less hard-core libertarian than mises.org, but then italy is just so totally steeped in a toxic mix of socialism and corporatism that i give them the benefit of the doubt.
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