Wikipedia: What Is It Good For?

The man credited with founding Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales — known to Wikipedians as “Jimbo” — was a finance major at Auburn University when the Mises Institute’s Mark Thornton suggested he read “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” a now-famous essay written by Austro-libertarian economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek. The essay argues that prices in the market represent a spontaneous order that results from the interaction of individuals with diverse wants, allowing them to cooperate to achieve complex goals. According to a June 2007 Reason magazine interview, this insight of Hayek’s is what led Wales to found Wikipedia. The rather lofty vision that inspired Wales? “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”

Last Knight Live Blog 1 -- Ransom

Greatest. Economist. Ever?

Jorg Hulsmann’s Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism pays for the price of admission on the first page with a priceless picture of Ludwig Mises at the age or 6 or 7. Here is an innocent, a child, looking out meekly upon the world, a child who as a man would later be reviled by his ideological and scientific opponents and hunted by Hitler, as a consequence of his boldness as a theorist of the free economy.

Guido’s Book Is a Magnificent Work of Scholarship

I’m would like to add my voice to the celebration over the publication of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism.

It is a magnificent work of scholarship, not only definitive on Mises’s life and works, but also brilliantly delineating the Vienna of the time, the development of the Austrian school, the place of other thinkers like Hayek, and Mises’s contributions to American and world libertarianism.

Uncle Sam Wants Me ... And My Children

Joe Spoor tells the story of how the state tried to rope his newborn into the system. “Approximately 5 hours after Nolan’s birth we received our first non-relative visitor. It was a nurse carrying a packet of information instructing us how to apply for state financial assistance to pay for various medical bills, as well as continuing care for our newborn. We also received a letter informing us we must submit information for his Social Security card, as well as details on the wonderful programs like Help Me Grow from the great state of Ohio. “Perhaps the most surprising thing in all of this was the attitude of those who were trying to peddle public assistance. They actually looked offended at our polite refusals, at our sense of responsibility in all of this. This entire experience of helping my son dodge the draft of Uncle Sam’s new public assistance army has been quite an eye-opener. Our nation is slipping away fast, and they are using our children as the crack in the door.”

Austrian Economics Hour on Bloomberg Radio?

I swear, whenever the markets are facing crisis, the mainstream chatterboxes on financial TV and radio finally see it as appropriate to listen to what the “contrarians” have to say. (Contrarian - as in someone who sees fit to think something other than the acceptable Bubblevision customs.) So, while the Bubbleheads obsess on the current market crises, they start inviting — even more so than normal — non-orthodox financial and economic types onto their shows. Bloomberg is becoming a virtual Bear Country in the last week or two.

The Rule of Law without the State

Were there such a category, Somalia would hold a place in Guinness World Records as the country with the longest absence of a functioning central government. When the Somalis dismantled their government in 1991 and returned to their precolonial political status, the expectation was that chaos would result — and that, of course, would be the politically correct thing to expect. In fact, Somalia’s pastoral economy is now stronger than that of either neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia. It is the largest exporter of livestock of any East African country. Telecommunications have burgeoned in Somalia; a call from a mobile phone is cheaper in Somalia than anywhere else in Africa. A small number of international investors are finding that the level of security of property and contract in Somalia warrants doing business there.
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