Fiat Currency I Might Accept
here. HT: Brent Butgereit.
The Specific Value of Money
The task of the theory of money consists merely in dealing with that component in the valuation of money which is conditioned by its function as a medium of exchange. FULL ARTICLE by Ludwig von MIses
Murphy on the Great Confusion
Murphy skillfully reminds us that the politicians who seek to suppress our economic and political liberties in favor of a central plan are neither omniscient nor benevolent.FULL ARTICLE by Gennady Stolyarov II
DeLong's Stimulus Accounting: A Deconstruction
Brad DeLong runs a quick calculation and decides that each stimulus job actually showers $77,000 in net benefits on the economy. Yet, we have seen that literally every step in his reasoning is suspect. FULL ARTICLE by Robert P. Murphy
On the Radio About Liberty, the Free Market, and the State
When I was in the Bahamas couple of weeks ago lecturing for the free-market, Nassau Institute, I appeared on one of the most popular and widely listened to radio talk shows in that country.
I spoke about the meaning and idea of individual liberty and the free society; the nature of and dangers from government; how government monetary and regulatory policies created the economic crisis we are in, and how current government policies are only making recovery more difficult; and I discussed the importance of free enterprise for a small nation such as the Bahamas.
In a new piece of mine, "On the Radio - The Importance of Economic Freedom and the Dangers from Government Control," I provide the link to the mp3 of the radio interview.
Or it may be directly linked from the "On Jeff Lloyd" radio talk show.
As I mention in my piece, about half way through the radio interview I sing a few bars. If there can be "singing cowboys" like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, why not a "singing economist"?
Professor Embraces "Social Value" Over Free Speech
I'm never surprised when a college professor embraces state censorship. Still, Rick Karcher makes a particularly laughable attempt. He considers it a violation of "journalistic ethics" for the Associated Press to report on, um, government activity:
Continue reading "Professor Embraces "Social Value" Over Free Speech" »
The Ethics of Freedom and Climate Change
The possible damages of climate change should be compared with the possible damages of governmental bureaucratic intervention and political oppression. FULL ARTICLE by Francisco Capella
How to Conquer Poverty
One increases production by making investments in more efficient tools. The free-swinging enterpriser, using capitalist savings, is the true hero of the war on poverty. FULL ARTICLE by John Chamberlain
Do Antitrust Laws Preserve Competition?
Competition is not a mode of conduct that anyone has to promote institutionally. It develops naturally and necessarily among persons who are free to pursue their own interests. FULL ARTICLE by Sylvester Petro
The First Thanksgiving and the Birth of Free Enterprise in America
At a time when belief in collectivism and paternalistic government is threatening to diminish even more of our shrinking freedom, we need to recall that this has all been tried before. And how it is the free individual, secure in his right to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property that is the basis of any and all the prosperity that we have in America and around the world.
At good place to start is with our Thanksgiving holiday this year. In a piece that I've written on "The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving: The Birth of Private Enterprise in America," I remind our fellow Americans about the origin of this event.
The Pilgrim Fathers came to colonial America to escape religious persecution in Great Britain, but also to establish a new type of society in the wilderness. They were determined to follow Plato's model in "The Republic," and create a communist utopia.
It lead to economic disaster, which was only overcome through the Plymouth Colony elders admitting their error, and instead "privatizing" the colony's property. By doing so they set loose individual initiative and market-based incentives. The result: a bounty in the wilderness rather than starvation.
It was this bounty for which they gave thanks. It was the birth of private enterprise in the New World.
America seems to be going further and further backwards to the older system of governmnent control and planning, which so many came to America to escape from in the 18th and 19th centuries.
We should not forget America's history and legacy of freedom and free enterprise -- beginning with the Pilgrim's experience -- when we sit down to enjoy our turkey dinner this Thursday. Otherwise, we may soon having nothing left to be thankful for!!
Richard Ebeling
Can Asset-Price Bubbles Be Harmless?
Frederic Mishkin believes that the Fed should continue with its loose stance, even if doing so blows more bubbles. Mishkin is known as a close confidant of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. FULL ARTICLE by Frank Shostak
The Great Depression of the 14th Century
Focus on the devastation caused by outbreaks of the Black Death in the mid-14th century is partially correct, but superficial, for these outbreaks were themselves partly caused by an economic breakdown. FULL ARTICLE by Murray N. Rothbard
The Little House Books: A Pioneer Chronicle
Laura was born in 1867 and lived for 90 years. Her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who died in 1968, is well known to libertarians as the author of The Discovery of Freedom. FULL ARTICLE by Robert M. Thornton
Chinese Ghost Town
It is sad to see a once-thriving city deserted. The heart-breaking sight of a handful of forlorn stragglers and struggling businesses remaining from what once was a bustling community makes us wonder, "why, why?" Only the most cold-hearted could be indifferent to the painful legacy of broken families, the receding memories of what once was, and hopelessness among the young. Take this city in China, for example. Oh wait...sorry....scratch that. The city in that video has never been inhabited in the first place. It was constructed by central planners to contain around one million people, but no one bothered to move there. The video contains eerie shots of a few solitary construction workers driving down the empty streets between never-occupied buildings.
This is an example of why I am a skeptic of the China growth story. A lot of the so-called GDP growth is spending by central planners that has no real economic value. The reporter says that "a country can raise its GDP by spending more", which is almost a tautology, since GDP counts spending. But GDP growth does not necessarily mean real economic growth. Real growth can only be accomplished by expanding the capital base, and that requires economic calculation by entrepreneurs who are risking loss of their own capital. Just building a lot of physical stuff and counting the amount you spent is not the same thing.
Kinsella IP Interview
I was invited to be a guest on The Peter Mac Show last night and ended up staying on for both hours. It was a pretty in-depth interview. The host asked impressively intelligent questions for someone who had just started coming around to the anti-IP position (after reading my Intellectual Property and Libertarianism just the day before (!)). The MP3 files are here: hour 1 ; hour 2.
A Credibility Meltdown for the World's Leading Climate Scientists
NewLiberty on the LvMI Forum shares a bevy of links covering the recent climate scandal that seems likely to become even bigger than the Yamal Controversy...
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hadley_hacked/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091120/full/news.2009.1101.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8370282.stm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,576009,00.html
"So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science. I’ve been adding some of the most astonishing in updates below - emails suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more. If it is as it now seems, never again will “peer review” be used to shout down sceptics."
...as well as a torrent of the actual leaked emails and documents.
Elsewhere in the web, the heroic Bishop Hill provides us with an extensive collection of summaries of some of the more interesting "CRUgate" e-mails.
But LvMI Forum member Le Master has his own choice nugget to share. He enjoins us to particularly "check out the PDF in the documents folder. It's a five-page document titled The Rules of the Game. It seems to be like a primer for propagating the AGW message to the average subject of the UK. The document suggests that it is a precis of a longer document housed at the Web site of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs."
Hopefully some readers here will follow Le Master's example and make the leaked emails and documents their weekend reading, and post what they find here or on the relevant forum thread. Many eyes make light work!
Let's give them something to talk about in Copenhagen.
Bleed this patient more, more, more
NYT: New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step
Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.
It might be fun to think of similar headlines in history, e.g.: New Consensus in Salem Sees Too Few Witches Burned.
Common Misconceptions about Plagiarism and Patents: A Call for an Independent Inventor Defense
Defenders of patents commonly say they are against innovators' ideas being "stolen" or "plagiarized." This implies that patents simply permit an innovator to sue those who copy his idea. This position betrays either disingenuity or ignorance about patent law. Let me explain.
Under copyright law, someone who independently creates an original work similar to another author's original work is not liable for copyright infringement, since the independent creation is not a reproduction of the other author's work. Thus, for example, a copyright defendant can try to show he never had access to the other's work, as a defense. The reason for this is that the fundamental copyright is, well, a right to copy one's original creative work. By the nature of creative works that are subject to copyright, it is very unlikely someone would independently create the same novel, say, or painting, as another author. (And if copyright only protected literal copying, it would be much less a problem; but unfortunately it protects a bundle of rights including also the right to make "derivative works".) But, in the rare case where author 2 independently creates a work very similar to that of author 1, it is not an infringement of author 1's copyright, since author 2 did not copy anything.
Patent law is different. Very different. Most defenders of IP do not seem to be aware of this difference--one reason they should not be opining in favor of legal regimes they know little about. When patent defenders say that patent abolitionists are in favor of plagiarism and idea theft, they imply that patent law is like copyright law--that it simply prevents people from copying others' ideas.
Continue reading "Common Misconceptions about Plagiarism and Patents: A Call for an Independent Inventor Defense" »
John Mackey on Mises
"Also, I don't think von Mises and Hayek and the other Austrian economists have gotten enough credit for.. . their theory of the business cycle. I really do think we are experiencing. .. what Austrian business cycle predicts. If you print a lot of money and you send it through the economy you'll have certain bubbles and those create market distortions and if the bubble's big enough and it goes on long enough when it pops, it creates great harm in the society. I think that's what we're living through right now. That kind of bubble in the stock market and the real estate market."
Leftist Attacks on the Google Book Settlement
I posted the following comment to Cory Doctorow's BoingBoing post Competition and Google Book Search:
Cory, Google is not perfect but the attacks on them for attempting this seem to me to be demonizing the wrong party. The problem is copyright law--a state legal system. The state is, as usual, to blame. Why some people are trusting the same state that foists IP law on us to protect is us mystifying. In attacking Google they are allying with the state (see my post Google Digital Library Plan Opposed by German Chancellor), which is the real enemy. I don't see any choice for google to accomplish the quasi-digital libertarian of orphan and other works other than its creative legal-settlement route.
Continue reading "Leftist Attacks on the Google Book Settlement" »
Omnipotent Government: Fantastic New Look
Libertarian Press owns the rights to Omnipotent Government by Mises, and we couldn't strike a deal to publish it ourselves, so we did the next best thing: we designed a great cover for it and asked them to do a special print run. This is an amazing work by Mises, better than Road to Serfdom by Hayek and probably the most anti-Nazi book ever published, especially because he rightly examines the essential socialism behind Hitler's regime.
Truly hard to believe
The far-left is worried that Obama is excessively influenced by Ludwig von Mises.
I know. It's nuts. Discussion on the forum.
A Pro-Free-Market Program for Economic Recovery
The most important single step on the road to economic recovery is the establishment of a 100-percent reserve system against checking deposits. Ideally, the 100-percent reserve would be in gold. FULL ARTICLE by George Reisman
The Myth of the "Old Right"
The writers and intellectuals who made up the most visible contingent of the "Old Right" were in no meaningful sense on the Right at all. They were on the Left, where they had always been. FULL ARTICLE by Jeff Riggenbach
Good Inflation
Cash-economizing inflation is benign because it is an outcome of individuals striving to optimize their property holdings through the voluntary exchange process. Indeed, it improves economic welfare. FULL ARTICLE by Joseph T. Salerno
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