In my seminar on spontaneous order, the topic today was road design. One of the articles discussed experiments with variable rush hour pricing for certain lanes (in California, I think). The idea is that there is always a certain lane that will have 65 mph travel, but it might cost $20 to use it at 6 pm. Anyway, I explained other applications of this idea.

It seems pretty obvious that most Austrians—especially Misesians and Rothbardians, but even the Hayekians etc.—are also libertarians. The correlation seems very high to me. I’ve often wondered why this is so. It could be that many people are Austrians because they were led to it by Rothbard or Mises, or some other libertarian, because they were already libertarian. But this does not seem adequate explanation to me... it’s almost impossible to conceive of a hardcore Austrian who is nevertheless a statist. Why is this? 

Apropos of the discussions of intellectual property here of late. (I was hoping to see discussion of this story last week here or on LRC’s blog, but better late than never.) The overstepping labels have now angered Steve Jobs, which is not a good sign. All of this could end with completely anonymous file sharing where file sharers can’t be identified and sued. Then the labels will only have themselves to blame for a failed attempt to cartelize P2P systems.

Robert Bork is quoted by the Washington Times on his reaction when he saw popular culture appear in the old East Germany: “You almost began to want to put the wall back up.”

Now that the State has finished the fascist imprisonment of Martha Stewart for engaging in non-crimes, they’ve committed her to house-arrest, as if she’s some kind of dangerous criminal. This is clearly a ludicrous attempt by the State to embarrass, humble, and humiliate Ms. Stewart. However, she is of such high dignity that she apparently has not let this atrocious miscarriage of justice depress her spirits.