Market exchange is not based on the requirement that both parties appraise the goods about to be exchanged at equal value. Instead, market exchange is based on both parties benefiting from a two-way, unequal valuation of the goods to be exchanged.

Libertarian economists typically adopt a two-pronged approach in their advocacy of free markets. On the one hand, they stress that people have rights (whether God-given or self-evident from the exercise of reason) and therefore should be able to engage in any voluntary activities with each other, free from political interference. Unfortunately, this appeal to principle is never enough, since the type of person who votes for today’s politicians doesn’t care much about abstractions.

From The New York Times of October 31, 2006:

The last-minute Surprise is a great American political tradition, but the Bush administration should get the award for the most preposterous and strategically wacky.

The death-penalty verdict against Saddam Hussein in Iraq – imposed by a US-controlled court backed by a US-protected government – was timed to give a lift to the Republicans before the elections.

First, NTP takes Blackberry’s manufacturer, RIM, for $612.5 million after using patent law to threaten to shut them down. Now, they’re going after Palm for its wireless email system. As the great tech-curmudgeon John C. Dvorak bemoans,

Tomorrow, November 7, Americans go to the polls. But by the time they get there, they have been bombarded by massive campaigns of self-interested obfuscation, misrepresentation and outright lies by those seeking political power. To combat the intentional confusion that results, and the liberties such confusion erodes, we must frequently be reminded of the need “to maintain and expose the glorious principles of liberty, and to expose the arts of those who would darken or destroy them.”

Here is a chart from the JEL showing that the much-praised Grameen Bank is a highly subsidized, unprofitable, and unsustainable institution. I have a piece on this subject coming out tomorrow but I was just visiting with BK Marcus on the subject of why is it that so many otherwise libertarian writers were so quick to buy into the Nobel Prize rhetoric about how Grameen is using the magic of credit to the poor as a means of social uplift.

I previously blogged about one of the papers by attorney Peter Jenkins. Now, from the “uhhhhh.... HO-kay” files comes his latest, in the Journal of Futures Studies, Historical Simulations - Motivational, Ethical and Legal Issues. Abstract:

In his recent post on religion (or his lack thereof), John Derbyshire provides his answer to the prerequisites for a civilized society and I wanted to see what the response would be from the most intelligent comments section in all of the inter-tubes...

Derbyshire stated: