On June 3, 2014, Catholic University in Washington, D.C., hosted a conference entitled “Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism.”

Despite all the massive monetary pumping over the past six years and the lowering of interest rates to almost zero most commentators have expressed disappointment with the pace of economic growth. For instance, the yearly rate of growth of the European Monetary Union (EMU) real GDP fell to 0.7 percent in Q2 from 0.9 percent in the previous quarter. In Q1 2007 the yearly rate of growth stood at 3.7 percent. In Japan the yearly rate of growth of real GDP fell to 0 percent in Q2 from 2.7 percent in Q1 and 5.8 percent in Q3 2010.

Today, capitalism is blamed for our current disastrous economic and financial situation and a history of incessant booms and busts. Support for capitalism is eroding worldwide. In a recent global poll, 25 percent (up 2 percent from 2009) of respondents viewed free enterprise as “fatally flawed and needs to be replaced.” The number of Spaniards who hold this view increased from 29 percent in 2009 to 42 percent, the highest amongst those polled.

“The lamps are going out all over Europe,” Sir Edward Grey famously said on the eve of World War I. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

It was 100 years ago last week that Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, setting in motion the unspeakable calamity that contemporaries dubbed the Great War. Well in excess of ten million people perished, and by some estimates, many more.

To defenders of the state, “anarchy” is a scary concept. They claim that we need government intervention to protect us or all hell will break loose.

But in fact we live anarchy every day, in one of the most crucial aspects of our lives: dating. Every day people meet, date, have one-night stands, fall in love, and break up; all without government intervention.

Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism . By Allen Mendenhall. Lexington Books, 2014. 161 pages. Originally published at Libertarian Papers.

August 9, 2014 marks twenty-five years since the signing into law of the US savings and loan (S&L) industry bailout, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) of 1989. After FIRREA was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, the federal government took control of 327 failed S&Ls with $147 billion in assets.

Ninety-seven years ago, a small but ruthlessly determined band of revolutionaries set out to prove that it would be possible to achieve material happiness — and social justice — by replacing free markets with economic planning.

One often wonders whether differences in economic schools of thought are big enough to justify strict theoretical segregations. One such case is “marginal economics.” Most textbooks point to the triumvirate of Walras, Jevons, and Menger, who independently discovered the notion of marginal utility and its relevance to the pricing process. Quite often these brilliant thinkers are homogenized as more or less indistinguishable figures who paved the way for modern microeconomic theory.

Although libertarians and Austrian economists have been interested for a long time in the relationship between art and liberty, there’s been relatively little effort to develop a distinctly liberty- or market-oriented form of literary theory; critical theory is a playground for myriad “isms,” but libertarianism isn’t often counted among them. Fortunately, this situation is beginning to change, as there’s a lot of exciting work being done in the field of literary studies, which isn’t usually known for its sound economics or liberal political philosophy.