Natural and Neutral Rates of Interest in Theory and Policy Formulation
[This article originally appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.]
Global Warming Is Not a Threat But the Environmentalist Response to It Is
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released the summary of its latest, forthcoming report on global warming. It’s most trumpeted finding is that the existence of global warming is now “unequivocal.”
Wilhelm Röpke on War and Socialism
For some unknown reason, some of Wilhelm Röpke’s best work has long been out of print, including his 1959 book International Order and Economic Integration (maybe the title alone killed the book!). In any case, in prepping the volume for online availability, I can’t resist quoting this passionate statement about how the early generation of socialists had embraced the state that had created the war that they so hated (WWI).
Lessons of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918
Mystery solved. I first heard about the deadly flu pandemic of 1918 in an obscure blues song from that era. As I learned more about it, like that it was the worst pandemic in world history, I wondered why there was relative silence about this horrifying event, relative to, say, World War I and the Great Depression about which any schoolchild learns. Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac gives this rather strong clue:
A Rothbardian View of American History
Rothbard’s historical method raises a fundamental issue, writes David Gordon: how influential are intellectuals in the course of history, and what motivates them? Rothbard’s response expresses a feature of his entire approach to history. He contrasts two sorts of intellectuals: “court intellectuals”, who serve those in authority, primarily wish to gain money and power for themselves. Revolutionary intellectuals, who oppose the state, do so out of genuine conviction. He minces no words about the former group.
The little government that could
The story of the debacle at Walter Reed that the Washington Post broke has generated commentary all over the place.
Google reinvents mass transit
Finally, the private sector figures out how to move people around from home to work in buses: $0, wireless internet, leather seats, and more. Looking at the failure of mass transit in the past, one might be led to believe that individual cars are the only market solution. But this Google experiment shows that the problem isn’t the means of transport so much as government management and ownership.
Feds finally recognize second amendment rights
G.A. Cohen, the Rothbardian-Hoppean Marxist?
In Jan Narveson’s thought-provoking and elegantly-written The Libertarian Idea (1990), he discusses an admission by a Marxist, G.A. Cohen, of a serious problem with communal ownership of property. As Narveson notes (p.
Hoppean Anarcho-Capitalism in Slate
Timothy Noah’s Would You Privatize Defense?The case for socialized medicine, Part 1, in the March 6, 2007 Slate unwittingly shows the danger of minarchism and the idea of public goods. Once you accept the notion that the state is legitimate and there are some public goods, then the door is open to argue that more and more domains of private life should be considered public goods and thus handled by the state. In short, any sort of state-advocacy, including minarchy, is a recipe for socialism.
