Which Way for Liberty?
Lew Rockwell shares some thoughts on the rise of red-state fascism in America, and the libertarian response.
The Reality of Red-State Fascism
Year’s end is the time for big thoughts, so here are mine. The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism.
Shining a Light on the Dark Corners of the Senate
In this age of internet-enabled politics the smoke-filled backrooms of politics as usual are having a hard time keeping the answer to “cui bono” a secret.
One site has observed that currently the government has no “system for assimilating, organizing, and releasing information on the hundreds of billions of tax dollars that are spent each year on federal grants and contracts.”
Why Students Don’t Value School
It was Tim Meyer’s first week of teaching as a full-time faculty member and not as an adjunct or TA. While most of his new experiences have been positive, he is seeing some things in a new light. The most intriguing facet of his “education” experience is confirmation that economists do indeed think and act differently than “normal” folk. For one thing, they understand why many students hate school.
The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate
The Independent Institute has the transcript and audio for this great debate between Harry Jaffa and Tom DiLorenzo. DiLorenzo is the clear winner, since he is right.
Property and Self-Determination
Someone just pointed me to an interesting 1997 FFF article by Sheldon Richman has, Property as the Key to Self-Determination. He has some points, but not sure I agree with every aspect of this sort of meandering piece.
Please spend irresponsibly
The air is slowly going out of the Denver housing market. Fortunately, we didn’t experience the kinds of runaway growth rates such as in Phoenix and on the coasts, but the market here is still not good for homeowners who banked on significant appreciation.
Incitement to Class War at The New York Times/Pravda
The lead article in today’s New York Times/Pravda is titled “Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity.” The piece is a denunciation of capitalism and its offshoot “globalization” for allowing such a thing to happen. In the print edition of the newspaper, the subhead ominously declares, “POLITICAL FALLOUT IS SEEN.”
Why Are We Worse Off?
New wage data indicate what you might have suspected. Lew Rockwell explains that the real cuprit here is inflation, which affects different goods in different ways.
Spam as a Nuisance
As argued in my forthcoming Whittier Law Review article with Walter Block, The Duty to Defend Advertising Injuries Caused by Junk Faxes: An Analysis of Privacy, Spam, Detection and Blackmail, spam can, in principle, properly be considered a type of trespass--since it is a means by which the spammer uninvitedly uses another’s property.
