Do Nuclear Weapons Deter?

Suppose that Iran got a nuclear bomb. Would it be of any use to it? Let’s say the US attacks Iran and kills half of its population. Iran decides to retaliate by nuking Israel and destroying half of its population. What happens next? Israel responds with a nuclear strike eliminating the rest of Iran. Hence the Iranian strike was both immoral (for millions of innocent Israelis are murdered) and irrational, because not only did the Iranian government get blood on its hands, but the entire Iran was wiped out rather than merely 1/2 of it.

Are Rich People Parasites?

[Are the Rich Necessary? Great Economic Arguments and How They Reflect Our Personal Values. By Hunter Lewis. Axios Press, 2007. Viii + 277 pgs.]

Hunter Lewis’s excellent book differs from nearly all other books on economics. Most books defend a particular point of view: a work by Duncan Foley, e.g., will be much more favorable to Marxism than one by Ludwig von Mises. Lewis instead presents the arguments both for and against the free market, allowing readers to judge for themselves.

Let’s Bring Back the Good Old Days of English Patents

It’s somewhat striking that modern libertarian advocates of patent rights seem blithely unaware of the utterly monopolistic, completely unlibertarian origin of “patent grants” by English monarchs. At the very least, they ought to be a bit uncomfortable that patents arose in this manner.

Interestingly, as reported by the Patently-O Patent Law Blog (The Roots of Patent Policy: Rethinking Early English Patent Policy),

What is Seen and Unseen on the Gulf Coast

It is fitting that the Mises Institute has released the Bastiat Collection on the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Though hundreds of years have passed since Frédéric Bastiat, the beauty of sound economic reasoning is that it does not change over time. In particular, his essay, “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen,” is especially insightful in analyzing the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. In first expounding his lesson and then applying it to the conflict between the private and public sectors, this article seeks to attack the fallacies of government spending and vindicate the free market. No one questions the need for rebuilding after Katrina, and few would go so far as the imbecilic economist to praise the hurricane, but there is still the question of who is to do the rebuilding. With a virtually unlimited purse, the government’s approach to reconstruction is necessarily wasteful, bureaucratic, and inefficient. As Ludwig von Mises noted, the problem with bureaucracy is that consumer demand is subservient to meaningless rules, edicts, and red tape. Through this lens, it is not difficult to understand the reason behind the inefficiencies of local, state, and federal government agencies.

Does Capitalism Make Us More Materialistic?

There was a time when the advocates of socialism argued that it would lead man to material abundance, whereas free-market capitalism would lead only to increasing misery and would ultimately collapse under its own internal stresses. You don’t hear that too much these days, and for good reason. A century of empirical evidence has shown the contrary—that the free market leads to increasing wealth and material freedom, while socialism leads us only to poverty, state supremacy, and ultimately, mass murder.

Who owns the copyright to cut-up jeans or low-rise pants?

Or better yet, what do the fashion and dining industries have in common?

Neither has traditionally been protected via IP laws.

Yet while conventional wisdom suggests that IP regimes are a necessary condition for both invention and innovation, the fashion and dining industries thrive and expand each year.

At least, that is until the political class has its way. Recently Senator Schumer of New York has proposed legislation that would “extend copyright protection to the fashion industry.”

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