Earlier this month, the California Legislature and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to put up the economic future of their state’s citizens as proof of what can perhaps best be called their personal “good global citizenship.” In a move reminiscent of television’s popular “World Poker Tour,” in which a player announces that he is “all in,” their new law mandates that by the year 2020, California will emit 25 percent less carbon dioxide than it now does.
In 1987, Robert Batemarco wrote, ‘this generation, by all indications, is likely to be the first in US history not even to maintain, let alone improve upon, the standard of living enjoyed by their parents.’
N.J. Hoffer sent in this incredibly fascinating story of a Fed crackdown on a group called NORFED that markets the Liberty Dollar. Now, I’ve never been much for these attempts to create an alternative money. They seem to falter on the problem highlighted by Mises, namely, that the money used in a society emerges from exchange of commodities, and remain money even if the government has robbed it of its commodity backing. So absent sustained hyperinflation, there will be no getting rid of the dollar.
I have previously posted on Frank Van Dun’s stimulating and promising draft comments on Hoppe’s argumentation ethics defense of libertarianism. I’ve long been fascinated by Hoppe’s argument and any related ones, which led me to publish New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory in 1996.
Microsoft made an irrevocable promise yesterday to not assert any of its patents against the implementation of some web based standards. ... So, MS is promising, in advance, not to assert patents over any standard that it helps to develop.
I was somewhat interested in this USA Today story about the “problem” of offshore tax shelters, until I came across a case study on a former classmate, Sam Congdon. He was older than me but I seem to recall that he was a good libertarian. Naturally the feds want to crush him.
