William Godwin: Communist or Individualist?
When Godwin began writing, he believed in what a libertarian of today would call a “minimal state.” When he finished writing, 16 months later, he was an advocate of total abolition of the state.
The Role of the Courts and Judges
If a judge were to say that a horse is whatever the government calls a horse, and that the government has the right to call a chicken a horse, everybody would consider him corrupt or insane. Yet many theories of law argue that money is whatever the government calls money.
Human Cooperation
Everything that is done, everything that man has done, everything that society does, is the result of voluntary cooperation and agreements. The government — that is the recourse to violence — cannot produce anything.
Renouncing American Citizenship
Every socialist and fascist regime in history has put up walls to prevent flight by people and capital. This is why people and capital are flying now, while they still can. In so doing, they are inspired by the writings of the American revolutionaries.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. An audio version of this Mises Daily, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available as a free download.]
Wal-Mart to Hire Only Women
Not really, but Wal-Mart should consider it.
In the current class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart that has just been certified by a federal appeals court: “The plaintiffs allege that women were paid less than, and were given fewer opportunities for promotion than, their male counterparts.”
China is considering taxing property
Ironies abound in the story of how China is considering a “U.S. style annual tax” based on home values. The driving motivation: raise revenue for local government and dampen the growing real estate bubble arising from speculative demand. Yes, taxes do that. But property taxes didn’t prevent the U.S.
Talk about a pig in a python
The Teachers College of Columbia University publishes TCRecord, the online version of the Teachers College Record. For those who do not know, the Teachers College is one of the nerve centers of Progressive education. All the evil -isms of the day have a home there.
TCRecord sent out a recent email that included an article lamenting the supposed youth obesity crisis.
Of course, no crisis can exist without associated hyperbole. This, for example:
Unemployment: Getting Worse
I’m looking at employment status of the civilian population by sex and age, not seasonally adjusted, March 2009 to March 2010
Overall: 9.0 to 10.2
Men over 16: 10.6 to 11.8
Men over 20: 9.9 to 11.2
Women over 16: 7.3 to 8.3
Women over 20: 6.9 to 7.1
Both sexes 16-19: 21.5 to 22.0
It’s a heck of a time to have raised minimum wages three years in a row.
What Is “Originary Interest”?
[This article is excerpted from chapter 19 of Human Action: The Scholar’s Edition.]
