I cannot tell the difference between a joke and a policy proposal. If you can then you have been duped … by supporters of government.

I have been discussing the nature and truth of the proposition that humans act with a nominalist. I have not been able to respond to his criticism of the truth of synthetic a priori categories, ideas, concepts, etc. It seems to me to be perfectly valid criticism, but I am interested to hear what other people think.

Mises says, “The a priori categories are not innate ideas. What the … child inherits from his parents are not any categories, ideas, or concepts, but the human mind that has the capacity to learn and to conceive ideas, the capacity to make its bearer behave as a human being, i.e., to act.” How does Mises know this, and what does he mean by the mind?

Mises rightly criticised treating imaginary things (collectives, analogies, metaphors, etc.) as real and warns us to be very cautious when using fictitious auxiliary constructs to explain things, but has he not himself committed the fallacy of treating the mind as a real thing? The mind does not exist; it has no existence as a noun. We can “mind” our step, but this “mind” has no structure; it is a verb. Yet Mises talks of the structure of the mind repeatedly and it is central to his claim that the proposition that humans act is true a priori.

Is Mises not mistaken in talking about synthetic things being true a priori and is it not due to his incorrect use of the mind as a real thing? Comments appreciated.

“The international medical relief agency Médecins sans Frontières is tracking down hundreds of thousands of donors worldwide to its Asian tsunami appeal and offering them their money back.” They received too much tsunami cash! (See also this older article on the same.) What was the reason behind all that government aid?

It’s cheap, compact, durable, and superior in many aspects to online and print publishing. In some circumstances it is the ultimate publishing medium. I’m talking about microfiche, of course.

Microfiche are post-card size transparencies with print pages – up to 504 of them – demagnified on to it. They are then inserted into a microfiche reader, which magnifies the decreased image so it can be read. Many libraries have microfiche facilities, but they are becoming more and more disused and hence, many libraries would be happy to give their readers away. But now that you have this microfiche reader, where are you going to get the fiche? Who publishes libertarian literature on microfiche? There is one man: John Zube.

Zube has run Libertarian Microfiche Publishing (LMP) since 1978. Its output is huge, with over 500 000 print pages scanned onto microfiche. Each microfiche slide is available for only $1. It is called the PEACE PLANS series and there are nearly 2000 slides in it.Authors he has published on microfiche include Austrian economists like Menger, Mises and Rothbard. But that is not all. There is Beckerath, Bourne, Childs, Mencken, Molinari, Say, Spencer, Sumner, Zube’s own writing, editions of The Individualist, The Libertarian Forum, LeFevre’s Journal, and other defunct publications. And then there is his excellent Slogans for Liberty collection, thematically sorted in alphabetical order, which numbers hundreds of print pages. It is difficult to sum up a 2000plus page catalogue, so I suggest readers browse the real thing. It is rare to find a catalogue that you actually enjoy reading, but this one is sure to astound and impress.

It is also worth noting that Zube is a panarchist or exterritorialist, a philosophy sympathetic with the Rothbardian position. It is well worth a look.

Ross Gittins discusses a book by Matt Ridley called The Origins of Virtue. In it he shows that “trade predates the state.” Hardly a surprise to readers of this blog, but quite radical for the mainstream media. (Thanks to John Zube for bringing this article to my attention.) I have not yet read the Ridley book, but an Amazon.com review by Donald J. Boudreaux calls it “one of the finest challenges to Thomas Hobbes yet written.” Are there any blog readers who have read the book?

All government intervention leads to unintended consequences. The government’s support of a “holiday” to plant trees is no different. Little does the government know what an excellent opportunity it is for the libertarian to plot its demise. Although covert and fairly long-term, a more sinister threat to government cannot be imagined. We should plant impenetrable hedges to fortify our property and allergy provoking trees around government offices. Etc., etc. Ambrose Bierce wrote a little poem (reprinted in The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce) to get us into the spirit of it:

Hasten, children, black and white –
Celebrate the yearly rite.
Every pupil plant a tree:
It will grow some day to be
Big and strong enough to bear
A School Director hanging there.

After all, H.L. Mencken did recommend, “hanging all the professors of pedagogy” (A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 311). Well? What are you waiting for? For more info on Arbor Day go here.

As part of a nationwide effort against the Australian government ending its enforcement of compulsory union fees, thousands of students across the country have taken to the streets in protest. They are obviously not students of simple logic, as their argument, in the words of the President of the National Union of Students, goes like this: “Let’s be honest, if you didn’t have to pay your taxes you wouldn’t and student organisation fees are exactly the same as that.” “Students are happy to pay them but if they didn’t have to I don’t think they would.” I’d be happy to pay taxes if the alternative was a gun to my head, or what amounts to the same. Same if I wanted to attend a uni course and to do so I had to pay union fees.

Many leftists when attempting to substantiate their viewpoint use as their benchmark an almost unanimously respected fallacy. Same in this case. If only they would go one step further and see the light. Just imagine the debate and possible consequences if they asked the government, “How are compulsory union payments any different from compulsory tax payments?” After all, the student union “reps” are “elected” in a similar way to politicians.

The mainstream media do not dare to investigate the validity of either sides arguments – they simply report what the opposing sides are saying, or represent one of them. And the mainstream media are an accurate representation of what most people feel (not think). It is not too difficult to venture a guess at what universities are teaching these days.