Internet access is one of the main drivers for economic and social development. No wonder that the wide availability of broadband access, as one of the main indicators of technology advancement of the economy, is shaping the agenda of governments. Everyone demands broadband access. However, Europe is lagging behind other developed countries and is barely above OECD average. And the proposed liberalization could actually make matters worse by failing to completely privatize providers—turning over both ownership and control to free enterprise—at all levels.

Murray Rothbard, writing in the 1950s under the name “Aubrey Herbert,” offers a profound reflection on a core dilemma of libertarianism: whether the state can be justified at all. The libertarian who is happily engaged expounding his political philosophy in the full glory of his convictions is almost sure to be brought short by one unfailing gambit of the statist. As the libertarian is denouncing public education or the Post Office, or refers to taxation as legalized robbery, the statist invariably challenges. “Well, then are you an anarchist?” The libertarian is reduced to sputtering “No, no, of course I’m not an anarchist.” “Well, then, what governmental measures do you favor? What type of taxes do you wish to impose?” The statist has irretrievably gained the offensive, and, having no answer to the first question, the libertarian finds himself surrendering his case.

A sign of our time is the split-personality of the conservatives, wrote Rothbard in 1954. Many to the right of center are off on a schizophrenic pursuit of both liberty and collectivism. In domestic affairs this regrettable condition is gradually being recognized for what it is. But the time is nigh for conservative foreign policy, as well, to be psychoanalyzed in hope of a cure! Conservatives call for free trade and free enterprise, yet also clamor for absolute embargoes on trade with Communist nations. Have they forgotten that both parties to free exchange benefit from trade? For our government or any others to prohibit trade is a vicious example of socialistic policy; it injures the Communist countries to be sure; it also injures us.

Guido Hülsmann shows us in this monumental biography that a common view of Mises is mistaken. As even Macaulay’s schoolboy knows, the American economics profession, dominated by Keynesianism, shunted Mises aside when he came to America. He was viewed as a relic, preaching an extremist view of free enterprise; and, as the mainstream had it, his famous calculation argument that showed the impossibility of socialism had been refuted both in theory, by Lange, Taylor et hoc genus omne, and in practice by the immense achievements of Soviet Russia.

The International Agency of Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will be adding overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen. A likely reason for increased incidents of cancer in night workers: reduced production of melatonin — a naturally-produced hormone that can suppress tumor development — due to exposure to lighting at night.

Introduction

The problems and ideas that moved Ludwig von Mises in his early years were addressed by the work of four great economic theorists: Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and Joseph Schumpeter. He knew all four personally, but Menger had retired from teaching a year before Mises discovered Menger’s Principles. They met for the first time around 1910, when Mises was attending Böhm-Bawerk’s seminar and preparing his first treatise, The Theory of Money and Credit.

[Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. By Brian Doherty. Public Affairs, 2007. X + 741 pages.]