I am trying to research connections between Locke, Smith, and Marx regarding labor. If I recall, Rothbard and others have written about Smith’s views on labor influencing Marx. I’d appreciate any suggestions or discussion as to good references on this issue.
Wolfgang Grassl sent along his latest comments on the latest embarrassment for the United States:
Roles Reversed: U.S. Defends Budget Deficits, Europeans Want to Save
The full absurdity of economic policy management is brought out by the current debate about how to deal with the enormous government debt that has accumulated on both sides of the Atlantic. Several EU governments, particularly those of Germany and Britain, have embarked on austerity plans to cut public spending.
In this week’s Barron’s, Thomas G. Donlan mentions (but not by name) Mark Thornton’s work on how the completion of notable skyscrapers mark the end of booms.
Donlan quotes Niall Ferguson, who thinks the Euro is headed “over the cliff and back to European disintegration.” So when can we expect the Euro to go to fiat money heaven? Donlan writes:
A recent CNET video on “Intellectual property rights vs. journalism” shows a Stanford University’s Innovation Journalism conference on June 7, with a panel discussion by various mainstreamers discussing the question “Is intellectual property protection a threat to journalism?” The lack of libertarian principle and sound economics has these commentators floundering as they discuss various cases where IP infringes free speech and freedom of the press.
Percy Greaves’s Pearl Harbor: Seeds and Fruits of Infamy is now published – a 1000-page tome that is the most comprehensive book on the topic now in print. The book comes as something of a shock, since the documents and interviews in here have been shrouded in a kind of mystery and secrecy for many decades.
Historically, newspapers have made money in two ways. They make money from readers, and they make money from advertisers. Originally, most of the money that newspapers made came from readers. In the late 19th century and early 20th century the old newsboy sales model was based on incentives to move as many newspapers as possible at the highest possible price. Advertising was a source of revenue, to be sure, but not the primary source.
