Bernie Sanders Wants to Kill Pro Baseball
Bernie Sanders loves baseball. He loves it so much, that when he learned of Major League Baseball’s decision to phase out 42 of their 160 minor league teams, he called for the government to pressure the MLB to keep the teams, protecting the jobs of minor league players while raising their annual salaries. He has suggested using the government subsidies to professional sports stadiums to compel the League to submit to his demands. But his goal is not to reduce corporate welfare (is it ever?) — he merely wants a business to maintain its unprofitable branches.
The Libertarian Legacy of the Old Right: Democracy and Representative Government
ABSTRACT: Libertarianism tries to face the difficulties and inconsistencies of democracy. The paper aims to provide a better understanding of the relationship between libertarianism and democracy going back to the early seeds of libertarianism and highlighting the critical contributions by some of the major Old Right protagonists. Inquiring into the role of intellectuals like Albert J. Nock, Henry L.
Henry Ford Did More for Workers than Unions Did
A Car for the Masses
When Henry Ford came up with the Model T, his goal was to build a car for the masses. Although history teachers typically present this as pertaining to price, Ford actually had to do much more than make his automobile cheaper. In fact, when the Model T was released in 1908, it initially sold for $850, compared to the Model N’s $500 price tag in 1906. As early as 1901, the Curved Dash Oldsmobile — designed by Ransom Olds — sold for only $650.
The Foundation of Austrian Economics
A Practical Approach to Legal-Pluralist Anarchism: Eugen Ehrlich, Evgeny Pashukanis, and Meaningful Freedom through Incremental Jurisprudential Change
ABSTRACT: John Hasnas (2008) has famously argued that anarchy is obvious and everywhere. It is less well known, however, that Hasnas also argues that anarchy must be achieved gradually. But how can this work? In this paper, I show that directly confronting state power will never produce viable anarchy (or minarchy). Using the example of Soviet jurist Evgeny Pashukanis, I detail an episode in apparent anti-statism which, by relying on the state, ended in disaster for the putative anti-statist.
Why the US Wants to Lower Germans’ Real Wages
On December 20, 2019, President Trump authorized sanctions against companies and individuals who are participating in building Nord Stream Two, a pipeline under the Baltic Sea that will bring Russian natural gas to Western Europe, principally Germany.
Butler Shaffer, RIP
Yesterday afternoon, Butler Shaffer, one of the great pioneers of the libertarian movement, passed away, two weeks before his eighty-fifth birthday. In a column written in December 2014, he tells us, “My interest in what is now called ‘libertarian’ thinking was kindled in college in the late 1950s.
The Seen and the Unseen of “Waste”
Our goats love this time of year. The neighboring fields have been harvested, but not completely. Around the border and in odd spots throughout the field that adjoins our property are fugitives from the combine — soybean plants laden with browned, dried pods. We tug the goats toward the gate separating pasture from field, and then, once they realize their passage is safe, they tug us to their awaiting meal.
And while they glean, I glean.
Investors, Randomness, and Entrepreneurial Thinking
Imagine mailing a stock prediction for next week to ten thousand unknowing recipients. Half of them contain a prediction for rising prices of some instrument, and the other half contain a gloomy forecast for the same stock. The following week you repeat the same exercise with the half for whom you happened to be right. After ten weeks, your initial sample has dwindled to nine people — but for them, you increasingly look like a stock market genius. For ten weeks straight you correctly predicted the movement of a given stock.