Interview on Free Banking
Region Focus interviewed me. It’s a publication of the Fed of Richmond.
My EETimes Letter on Protecting the Patent System
In EE Times: Opinion: Engineers should stage a patent strike, I noted an op-ed by Rick Merritt in EETimes, “Opinion: Engineers should stage a patent strike.”
A Mr. J. C. Cooper, of Pixel Instruments Corp., replied with a letter to the editor in defense of the patent system. My reply is reprinted below:***
Mr. Cooper writes:
Let’s Stay Together: On Direct Exchange and the Social Order
The discovery of the law of association was a great achievement of the classical economists. It points the way toward social harmony, showing that the powerful and the weak have a better way to relate to each other than through exploitation. The nature of the market as a network of voluntary exchanges means that each participant must feel he is benefiting from a trade, or he would not enter into it.
What Keeps Us Safe?
Look at the back of your computer monitor, the bottom of your table lamp, or the label on your hair dryer. Chances are you will see the symbol “UL” with a circle around it. It stands for Underwriters Laboratories, a firm headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, and an unsung hero of the market economy.
The Socialist-Syndicalist Plan for GM
The US government will swap debt for equity and take at least half ownership in GM. This amounts to socialization of a large part of the domestic means for automobile production. The UAW will swap debt for equity to cancel out the debt “owed” by GM to a union-run trust. Worker ownership of 39% of this company is syndicalism, plain and simple.
What’s Next--Trademarking Language? Don’t be Ridiculous!
The real swine
Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency. The CDC is working on a vaccine. Medical muckymucks are warning of “pandemic potential” and telling people to reduce all human contact by 50% and stand 6 feet away from all people. New York schools are shutting down. In Chicago, school kids have been instructed not to shake hands. The Obama administration is being criticized for not declaring martial law.
My Lord, how many have died from this catastrophe? To quote MSNBC: “No deaths have been reported in the U.S.”
The Link Between Obama and John Law
President Obama sees himself as the new FDR, armed with a new New Deal. But the New Deal wasn’t new when FDR did it. The charismatic Roosevelt was more than 200 years behind John Law’s Mississippi Bubble. Just like Obama’s and FDR’s “deals,” John Law’s prescription for what ailed France required no sacrifice. But ultimately, his system would only serve to forestall France’s bankruptcy, not solve it. Law himself would die near poverty a decade later.
Randy Barnett’s “Federalism Amendment”--A Counterproposal
Re Randy Barnett’s Proposed “Federalism Amendment”, here’s an amended version that I think would be an improvement:
Section 1: Secession. Any State or Indian tribe may, by an act of its legislature, secede from the United States.
Section 2: Nature of the Union. From the perspective of the United States, the States are sovereign and are the parties to the Constitution, which is a compact among the States.
The Walmart Question, or, the Unsupported Assertions of Left-Libertarianism
In Three notes for the critics of the critics of apologists for Wal-Mart, Charles Johnson/”Rad Geek” weighs in on this matter, criticizing, inter alia, Huebert and me. The following is not so much a direct reply to Johnson, but rather my own independent take on the ongoing disagreements between libertarians and soi-disant “left-libertarians.”
