Economics of Liberty: five bucks!
Stephan Kinsella reminded me about this book this morning. Economics of Liberty was published in 1991, and it really holds up, with article by Rothbard, Rockwell, Bethell, Richman, Bandow, Higgs, Denson, Taborrok, Reed, Kauffman, and others. Really outstanding. And get this. It is 390 pages, and priced at an incredible $5.
Roy Childs wrote of this book: "The great virtue of the volume is the excellent interaction between first principles and current events.... rational, zippy, to the point, informative with facts and figures, and based soundly on the first principles of liberty and the free market.... you can take your time reading them, using them as a 'bed book' that you can dip into at will, and learn a lot of information in a short time. And the book sizzles."
Sending it off for scanning now so that it can appear in literature. But at $5, why not pick up a hard copy?
Two-Cent Pennies: a Window on Inflation
It turns out, warns Tyler Watts, that the penny is an economic bellwether -- an indicator of the long-term course of the US dollar and of the soundness of US monetary policy. The penny does have a story to tell. Like a canary in the coal mine of America's monetary system, the penny can warn of lurking inflationary troubles. The lowly penny indeed has economic relevance far beyond its size and value. FULL ARTICLE
New Works in literature
The feed for this section of the site appears on the front page and elsewhere but still, just so you know:
Exchange, Prices, and Production in Hyper-Inflation Germany 1920-1923, by Frank Graham. This book has been heavily cited in Austrian literature. Sean Corrigan suggested it for Mises.org. Beyond that I would like to know more.
Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money, by Doug French. This is a masters thesis under the direction of Rothbard. It draws attention to the underlying cause of otherwise famous bubbles such as Tulipmania and the South Sea.
Is Deleveraging Bad for the Economy?
For most commentators, a major threat to the US economy is that banks are curtailing their expansion of credit in order to improve their net worth and hence solvency. This, it is argued, sets in motion a vicious process that leads to asset-price deflation, which for a given value of liabilities actually weakens banks' net worth and makes them less solvent. In fact, by adjusting their balance sheets to the facts of reality, banks actually set up a process that permits sustained economic growth. FULL ARTICLE
Troll Tracker Lands Job Fighting Patent Trolls!
In previous posts (Troll Tracker's Identity Revealed :( and Troll Tracker [Why People Hate Lawyers]), I discussed threats and bounties put up by patent attorney Ray Niro against the then-anonymous Troll Tracker (who repeatedly highlighted various patent lawsuits Niro was filing), which finally resulted in Troll Tracker being exposed as an in-house patent attorney at Cisco, Rick Frenkel. Frenkel was then sued for defamation by two lawyers in Texas, based on comments he had made about them on his blog.
Good news: as reported in Troll Tracker blogger Rick Frenkel moves to Wilson Sonsini, he has "left Cisco Systems and moved to Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a top Silicon Valley law firm, where he is of counsel. 'We were impressed with his breadth and depth of experience,' said Michael Barclay, an IP litigation partner at Wilson Sonsini and a PTT reader, natch. 'Rick has developed a lot of knowledge and insights about patent trolls that will be helpful to our clients who have to deal with them.'"
Good! Go get 'em, Rick!
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"Patent Hawk" Sues Microsoft, Former Client, for Patent Infringement
As reported on The Patent Prospector blog,
Inventor Gary Odom, founder of Patent Hawk, has asserted 7,363,592 against Microsoft. '592 claims a feature of the tool groups used in the Office 2007 tool ribbon.
Now, as noted on the Patent Prospector blog, "Microsoft was a Patent Hawk client for years. They had every opportunity for friendly [sic] discussion. The words 'patent tax' were used, and Microsoft chose a path consistent with their corporate culture."
A few observations. First, it is striking that Odom is suing is former client. Second, Patent Prospector whines that Odom just wanted a "friendly" discussion, and big ole' mean Microsoft wouldn't play ball. Hint: it's not "friendly" when you threaten to sic the state thugs on someone if they don't pony up. If the thugs in power didn't make it legal, it would be called "extortion."
Third, Patent Prospector implies that there's something wrong with viewing such a threat as a "tax". There's not. That's exactly what it is. Odom threatens his former client with severe financial damage by the state's thugs, and they call it a "tax." Hey, unfair! They are supposed to just pay their former attorney! Patent Prospector whines that Microsoft's "corporate culture" is a problem here, in viewing such demands as a tax. Would that more companies would openly call these extortortionate demands what they are.
But maybe we're a bit unfair to just take Patent Prospector's word for what really happened between Patent Hawk/Odom and Microsoft. Oh, wait--Patent Prospector is also apparently run by Patent Hawk/Odom.
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Government Projects do not "Create Jobs"
State projects may create jobs, writes Isaac Morehouse, but the proper question is, do they create wealth? The state could easily reduce Michigan's unemployment to 0% by mandating that every unemployed citizen shovel dirt on some state project without pay. Employment alone is not a good indicator of economic success; overall wealth is. Even if state spending can "create jobs," creating jobs alone does nothing for our state's overall prosperity or standard of living. FULL ARTICLE
The Locavore's Dilemma: Local Food, Continued
There are some good reasons to buy local (quality, information, etc.), but I'm not convinced that buying local meaningfully reduces one's carbon footprint. It's true that transporting foods pollutes the air and spills toxins in some places, but a focus on transportation-related pollution only does part of the accounting. If we're going to grow oranges locally, this will require more tools, labor, and land than it would take to grow the oranges in California and ship them to Memphis. Thus, we're saving the environmental damage from transportation but we're making up for it in several ways. First, we're using more land. FULL ARTICLE
Incorporation and the Fourteenth Amendment: The 140 Year Old "Riddle"
I just came across an interesting article by law professor George C. Thomas, "Thomas on Wildenthal on the 14th Amendment" (discussed on the Legal Theory Blog here).
A bit of background first. The meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, "ratified" in 1868, has been debated for about 140 years now--and increasingly so in the last 90 or so years as the "Due Process" clause of that Amendment was used as a source of federal power over the states, via the "incorporation doctrine," under which many of the rights implicit in the first 8 amendments of the Bill of Rights have been "incorporated" into the Due Process clause and thereby "applied" to the states (for discussion and criticism, see here, here, and here).
The standard line among libertarian proponents of the Fourteenth Amendment and its use by the federal courts as a tool to oversee and strike down "unconstitutional" state laws is that the Privileges or Immunities Clause is the proper basis for some sort of incorporation; but that the Supreme Court, in the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases inappropriately eviscerated the P-I clause, preventing its use for applying the Bill of Rights against the states.
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IP and Anarchy
Over on the Against Monopoly blog, David Levine, author of Against Intellectual Monopoly, gets close to conceding the case for anarchy (which I argued for in a post on that blog, Intellectual Property and the Support of the State) in this thread:
I guess I'd call myself a "practical" libertarian. If the practical alternative to a powerful state is rule by armed gangs, for example on the Somali model, I'm forced to go with the state. ... On the balance I'd go with a lot less state than we have. And more competition between states as well. The great danger is that the U.S. will succeed in eliminating competition between states to innovate.
But as I noted in my reply there,
David you wrote: "the reason we are so strongly against IP is because of the 'camel's nose' problem: a small amount of IP at best provides a small benefit - and is an invitation to have a lot of IP."
This is an excellent point. But isn't it true of the state itself? Even if you think a small degree of "regulation" from the state is better than none, having a state that can provide a little regulation is an invitation to have a lot (and it's bound to include IP, and too much of it, to boot!). So the only choice is to strongly oppose the state, just as you strongly oppose IP.
China, Eugenics, and Yao Ming
There are some rumblings over China's supposed sport eugenics program. While It is possible that this was limited to Mao and basketball's Yao Ming, it is also possible that China is still attempting to breed superstar athletes.
On the face of this, I say, "So what?" Can any government really see 20 years into the future (the time it takes to conceive, birth, and raise a future star -- gymnastics excluded) and produce athletes with superior genetics, guaranteed to win gold after gold? Hmmm.
Would any government bureaucrat have predicted 21 years ago that a tall, relatively lanky runner could blister the 100-meter record? Not likely. Any sports minister worth his tax-salary would have bred midsized runners with strong, powerful legs.
Can any government agent predict the future of basketball 20 years from now? Of course not. Government cannot plan the future, whether in economics or sports.
My concern with any eugenics plan is the other end of the spectrum; the millions of humans that government ends up destroying in order to create its envisioned supreme man (consider Nazi Germany eugenics and the New Soviet Man in the USSR). This is certainly one race that we do not need to enter: the genetically-superior athletes race (similar to the sundry other races we entered, such as space race, etc.)
That vary large concern aside: If anyone thinks that China can plan and breed athletes for the 2028 Olympic Games, consider how well your local city planned its daily rush hour.
Chez Schumpeter: Creative Destruction in the Kitchen
In the last couple of years I have developed an interest in food as a metaphor for economic and social progress. I don't have much to add to what Tyler Cowen and others have already written on the subject, but I can offer some personal case studies. Over the next few weeks, I'll be experimenting with leftovers and some of the provisions I bought during a Sam's Club buying spree a few months ago. I claim no expertise, particularly since I don't have any culinary training, but if these ideas can be improved on by abler hands I would be happy to hear about it. Experiment #1, which involves leftover noodle soup from Pho Saigon and barbecue from Germantown Commissary, is discussed below the fold (cross-posted at www.divisionoflabour.com).
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The Intellectuals and Socialism
There are very few original thinkers. Their ideas are propagated through society by the intellectuals -- the "second-hand dealers in ideas" as Hayek calls them. While they might not be great scholars or brilliant thinkers, the intellectuals are adept at taking the original ideas of others and then representing or promoting them to the general public.
For Hayek, the battle for freedom must be won not by original thinkers, and not but practical reformers, but by a new generation of ideological -- even utopian -- classical-liberal intellectuals: journalists, teachers, and public figures who can "make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds."
John Robbins, RIP
Gary North writes a very interesting obituary for this interesting thinker.
The Downturn Is Good News
I'll state again what everyone familiar with the Mises-Hayek business cycle knows: the downturn is a response to an artificially inflated economic structure. Loose credit, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, has been sucked into certain sectors and industries in a way that cannot be sustained. The response of selloffs and business failures represents an injection of reality into an unreal bubble.
Far from regretting the economic downturn, then, it is something that should cause us to breathe a sigh of relief. And by the way, this is not new knowledge. F.A. Hayek spelled all this out in his amazing writings between the wars, now recently collected and available for the first time in decades in a new book published by the Mises Institute: Prices and Production and Other Works.
Peddlers of Ideas
I realize that many teachers today would consider it demeaning to be called a "peddler" — even a peddler of knowledge and ideas. I consider it a badge of honor.
In a free market in education, teachers would be sales reps for their schools.
Catering to needs and wants is the challenging task of, first, identifying the needs and wants of one's customers, then carefully crafting products that will meet those needs and wants. The teacher who does this successfully year after year is a peddler par excellence and deserves praise.
Going for the Heart
Without a central bank, the political section of the bookstore would have to be reclassified as science fiction.
This is why you hardly ever hear a fundamental question on the right of the Fed to exist. This is why the political culture frowns on anyone who attacks the heart of the state. This is why it is so "unrespectable" to mention the case against the Fed, and why serious critics are treated to a kind of shunning — and why, if you want to go places in Washington, you must never entertain the idea that the central bank ought to be abolished. FULL ARTICLE
Montaigne, Libertarian?
Murray Rothbard praised Étienne de la Boétie’s Discourse of Voluntary Servitude as one of the greatest libertarian works of all time. But did La Boétie actually write it? Some recent research indicates that it Montaigne might be the real author.
What Motley Crue Can Teach Us About Drug Legalization
Anyone supporting drug legalization must reconcile their position with the existence of these coked-up hallucinating tattooed hooligans on motorcycles. Most citizens fear legalization would lead to the rapid decline of Western Civilization: the youth would jump at drugs; dope would be in every home and every vein; morality would fly out the window, and life as we know it would collapse all around us.
With these "esteemed" gentlemen as examples, only the deranged could support drug legalization. That is, until one examines the specifics more closely. FULL ARTICLE
New Audio Book: The Case Againt the Fed
When the Fed was imposed upon the public by the cartel of big banks and their hired economists, they told us that the Fed was needed to provide needed stability to the economic system. After the Fed was founded, during the 1920s, the Establishment economists and bankers proclaimed that the American economy was now in a marvelous New Era, an era in which the Fed, employing its modern scientific tools, would stabilize the monetary system and eliminate any future business cycles. The result: it is undeniable that, ever since the Fed was visited upon us in 1914, our inflations have been more intense, and our depressions far deeper, than ever before.
There is only one way to eliminate chronic inflation, as well as the booms and busts brought by that system of inflationary credit: and that is to eliminate the counterfeiting that constitutes and creates that inflation. And the only way to do that is to abolish legalized counterfeiting: that is, to abolish the Federal Reserve System, and return to the gold standard, to a monetary system where a market-produced metal, such as gold, serves as the standard money, and not paper tickets printed by the Federal Reserve. (pp. 145-6) [The entire audio book is available for free download]
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