Pushed Beyond Your Limits
Barron’s ($) recommends Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book Economics and Ethics of Private Property among five books on its list of “page-turners on the dismal science”:
Senator Stevens is Not As Dumb as He Sounds
Well, aren’t we all having lots of fun heaping scorn and derisive laughter on Senator Ted Stevens for his hilariously uninformed commentary on how the internet works? The audio is all over the web, writes Lew Rockwell, and doesn’t he just sound ridiculous? And yet, what he says is not entirely ridiculous.
An Ideology of Brute Force
In 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Vice President Richard Nixon walked through a replica of a six-room American ranch house that was on display at the American National Exhibition in Moscow.
Good for Clinton
USA Today has a very nice story on the effects of Clinton’s 1990s welfare reform. Contrary to the predictions of disaster, the tougher rules actually ended up being a step in the right direction. The rules made it more costly for those on welfare to stay there forever.
“Welfare caseloads nationwide have declined by nearly 58% since the landmark overhaul of the nation’s welfare system in 1996.”
Is laissez-faire a form of nihilism?
Roger Garrison calls our attention to this fascinating post by David Laidler, who is discussing the Austrian theory of the trade cycle. His description seems fairly competent and his account of the times is strikingly interesting. But what in particular draws my attention is his account of why the promising theory of the Austrians never went mainstream in the years that it might have:
Al Franken on Lying Liars
The woman from whom we’re subletting clearly leans to the left when it comes to politics. The other day I started reading her copy of Al Franken’s LIES and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Believe it or not, Franken is a remarkably well-informed and clever writer. Not only did he surprise me with his analysis, but he’s even funnier than I had concluded from watching his antics on Saturday Night Live.
Paying People to Vote in Arizona
Sounds a little fishy, huh? Perhaps even illegal? What if I told you it was being done with money taken at gunpoint!! This is a very slippery slope indeed. If it’s okay to bribe people to vote, I don’t think it will be long before it’s deemed acceptable to punish people for not voting.
The Source of Prices
Ludwig von Mises explains: “Prices are a market phenomenon.... There is no such thing as prices outside the market. Prices cannot be constructed synthetically, as it were.”
The Problem with “Fraud”: Fraud, Threat, and Contract Breach as Types of Aggression
Recently I pointed out something that has irked me for years: the misuse by libertarians of the term “coercion” as a synonym for aggression. Coercion is not necessarily aggression; and aggression does not necessarily employ coercion.
Give a Penny, Take a Penny
A member of the US Congress, writes Clifford Thies, has introduced a bill to eliminate the penny from the coinage. The more fundamental problem is how government control of money and coinage has meant steady declines in its purchasing power.
