I appreciate everyone’s comments on my intro to my “Capitalism and Socialism” course; indeed, one of the first things we’re going to do is figure out exactly what we mean.
Two themes we will explore are the emergence of social order and the restriction of coercion. That’s part of what my Forbes column today is about. Attempts to centrally plan a response strategy to pirates runs into the knowledge problem. Further, Peter Leeson has done some fascinating work on the emergence of cooperation among pirates. You can find a symposium on his The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates that was published in the Review of Austrian Economics here.
