Would anyone write the following today? From Socialism by Harvard’s Paul M. Sweezy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1949--the same year Human Action came out). Here is Professor Sweezy on how socialism will work in practice to do what an economy is actually supposed to do (citing Oskar Lange):
Sudha Shenoy recommends this piece from the Australian; it argues that outsourcing is the best thing to happen to the American economy in a very long time. Also in the category of international affairs, linked from Antiwar.com Blog, is this unforgettable interview with Wesley Clark.
The Eagle Is Grounded - While America works to protect intellectual property, everyone else is innovating:
The U.S. Treasury is recalling some 30 year bonds, five years prior to their maturity. This provides them with a $500+ million dollar saving, but what happens to bond holders? It seems that the “bellweather” bond—an indicator of good and bad policy—is disappearing quicker than first thought. Has the Treasury ever made such a recall in the past?
Eric Englund has some thoughts on Potential Inflation. “As has happened with all previous fiat currency experiments, government debt is repaid by simply printing the money to pay back the government’s debt obligations (i.e., bonds). Of course, as more money is printed, its value falls just like the gun safe plunging from ten stories above the ground.”
From Mike Ewens at AWC blog comes this: Iraq’s Dinar Gives Geenback a Run for its Money, and its paragraph with unintended irony:
A common view promoted by advocates of “free” or public education is that a system primarily based on fees would cause many children to forego an education. Subsequently, literacy rates would decline, and America would slide down a slippery slope toward low economic growth and stagnation. Whether education is part and parcel to economic growth is not the concern of this article. Rather, the charge of illiteracy in a fee-based or privatized system seems to be weak at best, considering the history of education in America and England.
As the American economy reels from the consequences of the Federal Reserve’s monetary manipulations, a burgeoning sovereign debt, an interventionist foreign policy, as well as a bevy of other no less onerous government-orchestrated distortions in the marketplace, it is fascinating to note the scorn with which the country’s legislators, trade unions and manufacturing concerns regard China.
I think that anarcho-capitalists, libertarians, and Austrian economists should be interested in Free Software (FS) and Open Source Software (OSS). I believe there is much to gain from studying FS and OSS. It would allow us to bring computer-oriented individuals into the larger picture of a free society overall.
