To follow on my recent post Why Do We Hate Modern Classical Music? I am writing a follow up to clarify some of the points that came up in the comments section. The first is to clarify that I mean “modern classical” in a stylistic sense, not necessarily limited to when the music was composed. I could have, and will in this post use the word modernist to refer to this style.
Today is the 85th anniversary of the birth of Murray Newton Rothbard, one of the greatest economists of the Austrian school, philosophers of liberty, and individual anarchists who defined libertarianism and provided the theoretical framework for a free-market anarchism that is known as anarcho-capitalism
While big-box bookseller Border has filed BK and announced it’s closing 200 of its superstores in the US, more nonbook retailers are selling books. Stores peddling apparel, food and most anything are starting to offer books. Grocery stores and Wal-Mart have been selling books for a while and now “Coldwater Creek, Lowe’s, Bass Pro Shops and even Cracker Barrel are adding new books,” the New York Times reports.
The NYT reports that Muhammad Yunus has been forced out of his own Grameen Bank under allegations of fraud and mismanagement. He denies the charges but one paragraph from the article certainly raises questions about Grameen’s operations:
Some theorists claim that externalities are probably the most legitimate reason for state intervention in human interactions. The ethical case for intervention is that it can presumably increase overall economic efficiency. This article demonstrates that, even if one accepts this ethical principle, the usual choice of externality-generating actions that are believed to justify state intervention is purely arbitrary.
[Excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]
The division of labor works in dating as it does with anything else. The academically inclined should focus their energies and time on their studies. That’s what they enjoy and what they’re good at. And now these young entrepreneurs have created a way to efficiently match potentially compatible people.
p>San Fransisco’s push for low-flush toilets has created a serious problem. There is not enough water flowing through the system, and so the back up has created a gigantic, city-wide stink. This can be fixed but only by pouring massive, unthinkable amounts of bleach into the sewer system, a prospect that has many people very alarmed. It’s the old story: intervention begets intervention. Perhaps we should think a bit less about “saving” water and start thinking about saving civilization.
In 1789 a group of men gathered in Paris to sound the death knell for the ancien regime, and to inaugurate the modern political world. But there were some differences among them. Some wanted to abolish the old order more completely. Others wanted to retain some vestiges of the old privileges. In this “National Constituent Assembly” of France, the ideological birds of a feather sat together: the more radical members on the left, the more conservative members on the right.
