Tom Wolfe’s gifts as a writer are much in evidence in his 2006 Jefferson Lecture, “The Human Beast.” No one reading it will be able to forget, for example, his description of José Delgado in the bull ring: “The bull charged. Delgado stood there, motionless. The bull reached the critical point where it would be useless for anyone, even a toreador, to flee.

Some great books are the product of a lifetime of research, reflection, and labored discipline. But other classics are written in a white heat during the moment of discovery, with prose that shines forth like the sun pouring into the window of a time when a new understanding brings in the world into focus for the first time.

Here is a little map I made up awhile ago of companies and their board of directors that might shed some light on the situation (courtesy of theyrule.net).

Here is a look at corporate competition. It may not mean much, but then again maybe it does have an effect on a competitive market.

I’m sitting here in the sweltering heat, wondering why the air conditioner at the Mises Institute is not being fixed after a full week of waiting. I again called the company that services them. He reports that all air conditioning parts and units of this size are extremely hard to come by since FEMA “in its infinite wisdom” bought up the entire stock after Katrina, from whereever they could find them, and stored them in a huge warehouse where they are now gathering dust.

I have a new article on the recently decided consumption tax (VAT) increase by the German government, where I point out how this will have a negative effect on Germany’s already weak economy and that Germany’s large budget deficit should be solved by lower spending instead.

Germany should learn from the experience of Japan, whose VAT increase in 1997 sent the economy into a recession, but whose recent deficit reduction through spending cuts have been associated with strong growth.

Rothbard’s 1994 article ‘Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State’ distinguishes sharply between the state, as a political entity, and the nation, a ‘complex and varying constellation of different forms of communities, languages, ethnic groups, or religions.’ Rothbard develops a theory of natural national boundaries, based on the principle of volunary association and the empirical claim that people tend to associate with particular familial, linguistic, cultural, and religious, groups.&nbs

Speech given to the Gold Investing conference held in Geneva on May 18th 2006

Among the Anglo-Saxons, there is a school of thought called the “Whig view of history,” which sees the course of events as an unrolling tapestry on which is woven a record of a steady, ineluctable progression from barbarity to civilization.