Two Constructions of Libertarianism

I

     Libertarians believe that all individuals are entitled to live as they choose, free from interference by other persons or by the state. They also believe that in the absence of such interference, whether by government or other agents of the state intent on designing or planning for society as a whole, order will nonetheless prevail. Given the freedom to contract and exchange, markets will coordinate the production and distribution of goods—and indeed do so better than any other institution can.

I, Pencil

I am a lead pencil — the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.

A Reply to the Current Critiques Formulated Against Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics

Introduction

     This aim of this article is to defend the usage that Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1989; 2006) makes of performative contradiction for justifying the self-ownership axiom. “Any person who would try to dispute the property right in his own body would become caught up in a contradiction, as arguing in this way and claiming his argument to be true, would already implicitly accept precisely this norm as being valid” (Hoppe 2006, 133).

Does GNP Measure Growth and Welfare?

The question posed by the title to this lecture raises a number of deep problems of economic science. The question seems simple, yet in these few words — measurement, growth, and welfare — culminate the problems of large areas with which economists have been concerned for centuries. How nice it would be then if one could report that now we have one single concept and, indeed, one single number which could summarize variations of growth and welfare. As we shall see this unfortunately is not the case.

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