In a recent article critical of Robert Nozick’s book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Samuel Scheffler argues that it is possible to give greater than libertarian scope to natural rights so that, contrary to Nozick’s conclusions, non-voluntary redistribution of income would be morally justified.
A criticism with which an anarcho-capitalist is usually assailed concerns the operation of free-market courts. How can the free market guard the interests of justice? Will not there be an incentive for a person to hire a relative (family bias) or to bribe a judge so as to receive a favorable verdict? Murray N. Rothbard and other libertarian writers have found that actual free-market courts which existed in the past competed with each other, not on the basis of their respective susceptibilities to bias, but on the basis of their respective fairness and impartiality.
This paper will discuss the emergence and shortcomings of Yugoslav market socialism. The central theme is that markets without saleable property rights are an illusion. As Mises and Hayek have so clearly demonstrated, truly competitive markets require individual freedom and hence private property rights. Property rights are important because they help determine the actions individuals can take and the rewards that can be captured.
Dr. Felix Morley, educator, scholar and author, has been a staunch defender of federalism, limited government, and Jeffersonian Republicanism throughout his long and distinguished career. As editor of the Washington Post, he received a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. He became President of Haverford College in 1940, and during World War II he served on a number of government committees.
Some years ago in Modern Age (Winter, 1958-59). in a poem dedicated to Robert A. Taft, Sr., he was referred to as “Old Round- head”, and compared to the English revolutionary, John Pym (1584-1643). The historical connotations and the loving insights revealed by that designation are highly significant. In the 20th century, Taft, indeed, did represent the anti-Court, anti-Executive Establishment, Country-Party tradition of the Roundheads, the Commonwealthmen, and the Independent Whigs.
The nature of political discourse has been significantly altered by the events of recent history, among which has been an accelerating shift of governmental regulation away from directing society by means of general rules to that of ad hoc, administrative commands and discretionary control. This has been accompanied by an apparent general lessening of respect for law and an increased interest in civil disobedience in the name of higher principles.
Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) was one of the distinctive figures in the profound and wide ranging intellectual debate which took place during the late Victorian age. It was during this period, in the intellectual and social ferment of the 1880s and 1890s, that Herbert formulated and expounded voluntaryism, his system of “thorough” individualism.
It is taken for granted by most economists and political philosophers that John Locke was in some sense a precursor of the labor theories of value of the nineteenth century British Classical School and of Karl Marx, yet there is a wide divergence of opinion on how Locke’s work anticipated and influenced the work of later political economists. In large part this difference of opinion stems from a disagreement among historians of economic thought over how to interpret Locke himself on the subject of labor and economic value.
The primary purpose of this paper is to contrast Austrian and conventional concepts of cost. Cost in the logic-of-choice context of conventional neoclassical economic theory is contrasted with subjective cost relevant to individual decision-making. The Austrian subjectivist concept of cost is shown to be sound as it relates to individual choice. The limitations of objective estimates of “cost” when used as a normative standard in evaluating observed market behavior are stressed.
To collaborate with an author in perceiving the implied ethical problems he poses and passing a moral judgment on their solution can be, as Wayne Booth has remarked, a heady experience for the enlightened reader. The wide attention given to One FIew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, both as novel and as film, suggests to the student of literary history that nineteenth century fiction has also raised questions which may give pause to anyone considering the American Dream.
