IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a severely flawed book, falling far short of presenting the indisputable case for the primary importance of genetically determined intelligence in deciding the economic performance of nations that Lynn and Vanhanen claim it offers. Whether or not some nations truly suffer from an ineradicable intelligence deficit, their best path to follow is the one of freedom. Even if a capitalist, low-IQ country has a lower GDP than a socialist, high-IQ nation, that does not argue against the primary importance of liberty for prosperity. FULL ARTICLE

All around us, every day, people consume far more than they need to survive, therefore saving far less than they could. Yet we all know that saving is the road to wealth. Why don’t top Wall Street traders live in tiny shacks, eat canned beans, and ride old bicycles to the train station? Why do movie stars go on mad shopping sprees and stay at fabulous vacation resorts? Shouldn’t they live as paupers in order to save every penny they can? Humans can only consume in the present. It is our present dissatisfactions that call out for relief. FULL ARTICLE

Here is an interesting paper by Christopher Coyne and Steve Davies. It counters the argument that empire produces public goods by pointing to the many public bads of empire.

Here I and my co-author discuss not the goal of preservation but the means. After all, it was the forces of the Venetian state (with some help from the Ottoman government) that blasted the roof off of the Parthenon after it had been held aloft for over two millennia. It was the army of the Roman Republic that razed the venerable cities of Carthage and Thebes. It was as a result of state actions that the great library of Alexandria is lost to us. World War I and II obliterated valuable relics of Europe’s past and its cultural gems at a rate previously unimaginable. FULL ARTICLE

Here is my book in Hungarian.

Austrian economics is the economics of people viewed as creative, intelligent agents. Today’s economic mainstream, however, has a completely different approach. It eliminates from view the very phenomena that makes economics different from other disciplines. The vast majority of papers in academic journals are dense with mathematical notation. FULL ARTICLE

There is nothing magical or mysterious about the a priori foundations of economics, or at least nothing any more magical or mysterious than there is about our ability to comprehend any other aspect of reality. All of our knowledge ultimately is grounded on our intuitive recognition of the truth when we see it. FULL ARTICLE

In this essay I want to draw attention to a period in the history of science that, I believe, will be of interest to supporters of Austrian economics. The episode in question–the rise and dominance of the mechanical school of philosophy–is almost unknown to those only familiar with the accounts of scientific history found in works intended for the general public or in science textbooks, because it doesn’t fit into the storyline such narratives almost invariably are intended to convey. It turns out that science does not always make steady progress; it sometimes enters cul-de-sacs that it must eventually back out of in order to move forward again.FULL ARTICLE

Jared Diamond’s bestselling book has rocked the scholarly world and public opinion with its seemingly well-documented claim to have discovered some ultimate causes of civilization’s rise, and proved it by surveying 13,000 years of history. Despite vast research and erudition, however, Diamond apparently has little understanding of what constitutes genuine history. His book is an interesting read, so long as the reader can see through the overarching error, long ago exposed by Mises and Collingwood, namely, attempting to understand history apart from human action. [FULL ARTICLE]

While getting on the escalator at the London underground station tonight, I noticed a sign reading:

STAND ON THE RIGHT
HOLD THE HANDRAIL
NO STROLLERS
DOGS MUST BE CARRIED

Well, I was standing on the right, I was holding the handrail, and I certainly had no stroller. But I wasn’t carrying a dog!

Luckily, no one noticed. But I’m thinking of getting something small – a rat terrier? – so as to avoid trouble in the future.

[Read full diary]

Many science textbooks contain similar one-or-two-paragraph histories of how modern science miraculously emerged from the dark swamp of ignorance we call the Middle Ages. The main problem with such stories is that they are almost entirely false. Let’s compare the picture painted above with the current understanding of scholars studying the history of the Scientific Revolution. [Full Article on LRC]

Many people have said that the collapse of the Soviet Union proved that Mises was correct. But if its survival for seventy years did not prove him wrong, then it is hard to see how its eventual demise could have proved him right. New research into the origins of writing provide clues that allows us to formulate Mises’s argument concerning calculation more precisely. [Full Article]

The Polish version of Economics for Real People has been released.

Even the most useful, most sophisticated models are only skeletal images of some full experience. Watching a simulation of a hurricane on a computer screen is a far cry from actually being in the midst of one. The chaos that ensues once a real battle is underway is never captured in a model of the conflict. The same is true of the real world of economics, which belies the models time and again. [FULL ARTICLE]