Butler Shaffer

Articles

04/06/2017 Mises Wire Butler Shaffer

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops — no, but the kind of man the country turns out. — Ralph Waldo Emerson In case any reader still clings to the...

Secession and the Law

03/31/2014 Mises Wire Butler Shaffer

I am amazed at the absence of reasoning found in the responses of many lawyers, law professors, political philosophers, and media opiners on the topic of political secession. As with political...

How Intellectual Property Distorts Big Business, Science, and Creativity

01/07/2014 Mises Daily Butler Shaffer

The state’s creation of patent and copyright interests doesn’t prevent innovations, but it does erect hurdles that discourage research. The “traditional enemies of innovation [are] inertia and vested interest,” factors contributed to by the government practice of giving inventors protection from competitors.

Publications

In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918-1938

07/29/1997 Butler Shaffer

This extremely important study by Butler Shaffer—professor of law and economist—will change the way you think of the relationship between the state and business. It makes a deep inquiry into the attitudes of business leaders toward competition during

Boundaries of Order: Private Property as a Social System

05/26/2009 Butler Shaffer

Every once in a while, a treatise on libertarian philosophy appears that presages a new way of thinking about politics and economics. Mises’s Liberalism, Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty, and Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed come to mind

The Wizards of Ozymandias

05/25/2012 Butler Shaffer

Butler Shaffer has, over the course of several years, written 51 wonderful essays observing the dissolution of Western culture and civilization. They have been assembled in the The Wizards of Ozymandias a captivating work full of entertaining

Media

A Libertarian Critique of Intellectual Property

06/11/2014 Butler Shaffer

Butler Shaffer's contribution to libertarian legal theory and an indispensable guide to a vital topic.

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Human Spirit: The Luddites Revisited

03/01/2004 Butler Shaffer

Butler Shaffer does a Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Human Spirit: The Luddites Revisited at the 2003 Austrian Scholars Conference.

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Screen

11/03/2004 Butler Shaffer

Recorded 10/15/2004 at Radical Scholarship: The Guerrilla Movement for Liberty.

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