The Postwar Renaissance I: Libertarianism

Murray Rothbard on the immediate postwar period: For a while the postwar ideological climate seemed to be the same as during the war: internationalism, statism, adulation of economic planning and the centralized state, were rampant everywhere. During the first postwar year, 1945–46, I entered Columbia Graduate School, where the intellectual atmosphere was, oppressively, just more of the same.

His crime: not being regulated

The Columbus Dispatch has an article about Bob Munley, a truly evil criminal. His crime? Producing and bottling tea, unregulated and at home nonetheless. And, state regulators can’t have that. So much for Liberty. Any risk associated with his tea is accepted by the consumer. Funny, you can purchase and consume FDA-approved drugs that are lethal, yet woe to him who dares sell tea made at home.

Fires of the Feds: How the Government Has Destroyed Forests

Fires are natural in that they have always occurred on earth, and will continue to occur. The real problem with the current fires, writes William Anderson, is government. Governments — in the name of “scientific” and “ecological” management — have grossly mismanaged the natural environment. Environmental policy has operated on the assumption — as so eloquently stated by Lew Rockwell — that “private ownership is the enemy.” He writes that environmentalists believe that nature is an end in itself. Indeed, we see the handiwork of such policies: utter destruction of human and animal habitat. Those endangered species that the law was supposed to protect are swallowed up along with the million-dollar houses that environmentalists hate. So much for the state that “protects” nature. In fact, government has dealt with the natural environment in much the same way that the US Armed Forces dealt with Vietnam: they have destroyed it in order to “save” it.

Anything you will is true

I don’t intend a live blog of Garrett’s book Harangue (1926)—about half finished—but I did want to share these observations on the socialist movement of the 1920s, in the words of one of the characters who treats the whole movement with some distance. Elsewhere, Garrett treats the problem of how and why the wealthy “buy” socialist ideology as a means of distinguishing themselves from the bourgeoisie. Here we have the anatomy of the movement as this one character understands it:

“Last Knight” Live Blog 13 -- Greg Ransom

Economics out of a crucible describes the way World War and “war socialism” crystallized the scientific mind of Ludwig Mises. During WWI Mises spend 2 years at the front lines commanding an artillery unit. In 1916 — between front line assignments — Mises spent a further 7 months at the Scientific Committee for War Economics at the War Ministry. It must have been jarring to move from combat to an “Ivory Tower” government think tank and back again to combat. War gives men a surprising amount of time to think. At the same time war concentrates the mind like few other emotional experiences.

Can You Say Marginal Rate of Substitution?

Once, when my newborn son was barely back from the hospital, I was holding him in my arms with my wife looking on. I asked him, “Can you say marginal rate of substitution?” My wife recognized that as a bit of economics jargon and accused me of trying to turn our son into an economist like me. While it was said as a little joke between the two of us, the longer I teach and write, the more I seriously wish people actually thought in such marginal terms, because many of the times that we confuse ourselves and others are due to our failure to do so.

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