The Driver: The Human Story Behind the Economic History
I had the distinct privilege of being the first person outside the Riggenbach household to hear this recording. All the praise of Garet Garrett’s novels had failed to convince me to read any of them. Listening to the audiobook was something I did for work, to check for errors before we went into production. I didn’t even take up the task with any pleasure, as there was a very narrow window for quality review and it meant that I had to spend my weekend doing something other than R&R.
The Driver Audio CD — yippee!
Here is an audio sample that covers the opening chapter in which a free-silver movement of unemployed social reformers makes its way on a march to Washington.
Rothbard the system builder
A wonderful essay by Wendy McElroy here.
Back alley organ transplants
How do you create back alley organ transplants? Simple, just prohibit the buying and selling of human organs and then go all over the world trying to stop the market from working. Government payment for organs and control over distribution is no answer and would no doubt cause economic and ethical problems of its own. The market solution is just that — let the market determine the market.
Here is my review of the Kaserman and Barnett book on the subject.
The Left Deals with Hayek, again
Somehow I think that I’ve read this review before in many other forms and venues and by many different authors. It is a “thoughtful” leftist reviewing Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, generally agreeing that, first, yes, full-blown socialism of the statist sort is crushing of liberty, but, hey, no one believes that stuff anymore. The left is thoughtful and wonderful now and believes not in despotism but democracy.
Wages, Unemployment, and Inflation
The Enemy Is Always the State
The web loves nothing more than a good brawl, so people often write me to ask me to respond to a critic of LRC or the Mises Institute. There’s certainly no shortage of them, and they come from the Left, the Right, and everything in between. My first thought on the request is that the archive speaks for itself, and a response would amount to little more than reprinting.
Beware the Moral Hazard Trivializers
A test of your economic intuition
You see a headline that reads “$1 billion Later, Elevators Still Fail.“
The project in question is:
a) a private company that is managing a private facility of some sort;
b) a government project.