The ideology that informs the thinking of present-day “civil rights” agitation is cluttered with misconceptions. It is not true, for example, that discrimination must lead to poverty. As Thomas Sowell observes, the Chinese have never enjoyed an equal playing field in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, or Vietnam, yet the Chinese minority in these countries – a mere five percent of the population – owns most of these nations’ total investments in a variety of key industries.

When taxes are raised in order to fund Social Security “privatization” (yes those are scare quotes), as David Brooks suggests will in fact happen, who should get the blame for having laid the groundwork? (thanks LRCblog)

It’s a credit to book buyers that Thomas Wood’s new work has turned out to be one of the fastest selling titles in the history of the Conservative Book Club.

Today Southeast Asia is proof of libertarian concepts that trade and free markets can bring about political stability, international cooperation and, eventually, civil liberties.  Also their democratic evolution followed the Anglo Saxon model of direct representation instead of proportional representation (whereby parliaments are selected from Party Lists, used all over Latin America and in most of East Europe).  China is “behind” politically, but so dynamic that political takes second place.  Few would trade its prosperity for more political freedoms.

The economist magazine has an essay on whether the dollar could lose its reserve status. The article makes a number of good points, although no surprises to most Austrians. Hazlitt forecasted the end of the Bretton Woods system in an inflationary crisis 40 years ago. The unravelling has been postponed by a series of magic tricks and fortuitous accidents. But now,

Ever since this article appeared—”Sell Your Kidney, Make a Profit” by Ninos Malek—the Mises Institute has received a steady stream of emails and phonecalls offering to sell and hoping to buy various body parts. As a non-profit organization dedicated to economic education, we cannot do this. Nor are we really prepared to received bodily organs as in-kind gifts. The article has been updated to reflect these facts.

Mises wrote this essay in 1940 from Geneva, where he lived after Nazis forced him out of Austria and his apartment was ransacked by German troops.

From an Alternet.org interview with “Students Against Sweatshops” author Liza Featherstone:

“Some of the more anarchist types are very critical of activists who don’t lead an alternative, anti-capitalist lifestyle (growing their own food, composting, making their own clothes, etc.). Others say that kind of self-sufficient life isn’t really conducive to building a movement because it’s very isolating, and takes up a lot of time.”

A Thanksgiving visit to my Texas hometown provokes the question: it is possible to adore the people and enterprising ethics of a place while abhorring its politics of nonchalant imperialism? There are plenty of theoretical problems with combining laissez-faire economics with the belief that the Texas political establishment ought to otherwise run the world. But such a stance, however contradictory, seems unquestioned and nearly instinctual here. The paradox should cause some rethinking of some entrenched notions concerning the links between politics and culture.