It’s political season again, and what a show it is. Politicians specialize in this. They affect a know-it-all posture and carry a bag of solutions to every problem, natural, human, and divine. They work to perfect the ability to fob off their solutions as sound reasoning even when they are snake oil or sheer poison. Still, one can only marvel at how successful they are at bamboozling the population.
This is rich. Brazilian central bank employees have gone on strike to press for a 23 percent wage increase to compensate for inflation that has taken place since June 2008. HT to Mark Thornton.
Now this puts Progressive Era economists in their proper light!
When the Civil War came, many abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, abandoned their traditional anti-war, anti-state stance to support the Northern cause, in the hope that a Union victory would bring a quicker end to slavery. One abolitionist who stuck to his anti-war position and defended Southern secession was Ezra Heywood; his critique of the Garrisonian position is now online here. Commentary here.
Actual Ethics. By James R. Otteson. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Xviii + 349 pgs.
The title of James Otteson’s book is, I am sure unintentionally, misleading. Readers might expect a dry and abstract philosophical treatment of ethics. In fact, what Otteson offers is a full-scale defense of classical liberalism.
I often tire of people asking (usually in a self-contradictory, petulant tone, more demanding than asking), “Okay, so what is the source of rights?! Where do they ‘come from’?!” My reply is usually that the questioner either respects my rights, or he does not. If he does not, he can go to h*ll—I’m not wasting time talking to an uncivilized thug, any more than I would treat with a rampaging elephant, bandit, lion, or hurricane. And if he does respect rights—then my stance is: how dare you demand of me that I justify your own views?
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I’ve noted previously disagreement with various aspects of Hayek’s knowledge problem (Knowledge vs. Calculation) and other Hayekian terms (such as “spontaneous”, see p. 68 of Knowledge, Calculation, Conflict, and Law)--terms that make my praxeological trigger finger itchy, so to speak.
The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy. Second Edition. By Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006. Xii + 433 pgs.
Hans Hoppe is a thinker of striking originality, and this excellent collection of his essays is filled with arguments: it is, as my great teacher Walter Starkie used to say, “packed with matter.” I shall confine myself to a few of his points, but it would be an easy task to write several other reviews, each emphasizing completely different arguments.
