Copyright originated hundreds of years ago as a legal and economic tool meant to protect and incentivize artistic creations. Indeed, the concept is explicitly listed in the United States Constitution as a means of securing for authors the exclusive right to their writings. However, copyright’s applicability wasn’t always so clear when technological advancements occurred at a faster pace than legislative amendments. The artistic creations that the Constitution described had been first and foremost a reference to literature and other written works.

Check out these slides for the Age of Crony Capitalism, an online course on David Stockman’s book, The Great Deformation. The instructor is Robert Batemarco, an economist who has worked with Rothbard! Course starts tonight. Sign up here.

Slideshow

A recent New York Times article bemoans the rise of populist parties in European countries, which are stridently nativist and nationalist. In Denmark, some polls show that the Danish People’s Party is now more popular than the incumbent Social Democrats.

Check out Bill Anderson’s slideshow for his online course that starts tonight. And as information-rich as this is, Dr. Anderson never just reads from  his slides. He always provides loads more information in his remarks. Come join us!

Click here to view the slideshow

To a critic who doesn’t understand it:

Associated Scholar Jo Ann Cavallo presented on “State Power and Personal Liberty in The Prince” at the Symposium on Machiavelli: Then and Now, sponsored by The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Hunter College, in November.

Many thanks to the anonymous donor who made this seminar possible.

I’ve previously discussed attempts to blame the accounting scandals of the early 2000s on the teaching of transaction cost economics and agency theory. By describing the hazards of opportunistic behavior and shirking, professors were allegedly encouraging students to be opportunistic and to shirk.