An interesting article from Taki about the writer’s time with Hoppe and the Property and Freedom Society.

It had become an underground classic, with dog-eared copies of the book fetching hundreds of dollars on Amazon before the Mises Institute republished it.

There’s a growing moral scrupulosity going on in libertarian land, to the point that every really existing business is closely examined for any hint of state involvement (sin!), even when one stage removed (sin!), and then, upon discovery, condemned to hell has yet another example of the terrible things that the state does to the world. How does this work? If you defend WalMart – an amazing company that provides for the world – the scrupulous will cite how it thrives off public road access.

It turns our that after the voters of Colorado Springs rejected a tax increase for the city, the city’s politicians ordered their public relations staffers to bad mouth the city and to cast a negative light on the city in national media. Basically, since they didn’t get their tax increase, the politicians were determined to make the city look as lousy as possible in a sort of I-told-you-so campaign that would make the voters sorry for not submitting to their betters.

The angrier-than-thou “moral scrupulosity” among some libertarians that Jeffrey Tucker talks about in his excellent recent post seems to be part of something a bit broader. As a commenter on Jonathan Catalan’s blog post seconding Jeffrey’s sentiments said, there can be a tendency for libertarians to be “willful grumps”.

John Tomasi is guest-blogging for Bleeding-Heart Libertarians on a research agenda for bleeding-heart libertarians. His latest entry continues his “frozen waters” metaphor and describes “Ships of the BHL Line.” He points out that a lot of bleeding-heart libertarians and 20th century liberals share many of the same values–a commitment to the betterment of the lives of the poor, for example.

Benjamin Powell knocks out three of the myths about immigration: they’re a drag on the economy (false!), they take our jobs (false!), and they lower our wages (false!):

The ADP report on unemployment looks terrible: private sector hiring mostly stagnant overall. Here is the detailed report that paints many pretty pictures of what a double dip looks like.