A very nice piece by Declan McCullagh , especially strong on documenting how government completely failed at crisis management—after all the untold hundreds of billions spent after 9-11 for homeland preparedness blah blah. One quibble here, which is endemic to literature that speaks only of Hayeken spontaneous order vs. intentionality, not the
Murray Rothbard offers this challenging observation about socialism in his 1964 piece from Continuum , featured on LRC today: The libertarian needs, perhaps most of all, to be informed by history, and to realize that conservatism was always the polar opposite of classical liberalism. Socialism, in contrast, was not the polar opposite of either,
I was just having a conversation with a visiting political philosopher from Northern Italy. He asked about a sense he has picked up from American political philosphy literature and culture. He said, and he was cautious in saying so, that he sensed that “Rothbard seems to be somehow ostracized by the profession.” He meant that mainstream books and
David Hughes sends the following: Given the headline (” Amtrak to spin off Northeast Corridor “), one could be forgiven for thinking that Amtrak is about to privatize its most (and perhaps only) profitable region: But then one reads the fourth paragraph: “The plan, which would require action by Congress, is to transfer the corridor to a consortium
The various government agencies that finally got around delivering aid to people hit by Katrina often brag about the 2.2 million Meals-Ready-to-Eat (MREs) they handed out. Surely these did some good for someone, somewhere, but I can also report that MREs are everywhere these days in the Deep South, and wastefully so. Apparently, agencies drove
With all the talk of price controls on gas, it is useful to consider their ill-effects by way of example, not from the 1970s but from present-day Iraq . Seems like regime change is
At first, this seemed like an internet hoax: FEMA is giving out debit cards for all Katrina victims, $2000. But it is real indeed. Here is the Fema press release , and a news story. LibertyGuys offers a solid critique. But beyond the criticism that this is redistribution driven by politics, sets a very strange precedent, introduces a moral hazard
Not quite. Well, not at all. Today’s featured article on Wikipedia however offers a fairly concise and in-depth look into this iconoclastic philosophy affectionately called anarcho-capitalism . In addition to reading it, be sure to peruse and clean-up the biographies on Mises and Rothbard as well. Via Silas
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.
