• Becker, Joseph, Procrustean Jurisprudence: An Austrian School Economic Critique of the Separation and Regulation of Liberties in the Twentieth Century United States
• Crespi, Gregory Scott, Exploring The Complicatio

Today’s NY Times article by Paul Krugman, “Not the New Deal,” gave me a few chuckles. With George W.

There has been much discussion on this blog and elsewhere about whether to rebuild severely hurricane-damaged areas so people can live there again, and who should assume the risk for doing so. This lawsuit by the government of Mississippi doesn’t bode well for sensible decision-making about rebuilding.

Austrian utility and welfare theory [pdf] observes that all transactions in a free market economy take place only when both parties believe they will be happier as a result of an exchange. People act in ways that maximize their personal well being, subjectively understood. In contrast, in centralized economies the only way the state can enforce its economic decisions is through the threat of force for noncompliance, or fear.

“It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of right.”1

In recent weeks tens of millions of trousers, dresses, brassieres, T-Shirts and other categories of clothing and textiles have amassed at European ports, prohibited from reaching retail outlets by customs officials.

The consumer goods were held in abeyance because of an ill-conceived trade agreement limiting exports to the European marketplace struck in June between China and the European Union, a mere six months after the highly distortionary global quota textile regime expired.

Starting this year, writes Gary Galles, every educational institution receiving federal aid must teach about the U.S. Constitution on the September 17 anniversary of its signing.