Thousands of TWEETS, Posts, Articles, Pages, chapters, Notes, Diagrams, drafts, sketches and Quotes from 2009 to present
A Little Appreciation For Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried via Paul Gottfried – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I’ve met Paul a handful of times, and while he probably doesn’t remember, been to lunch with him once to discuss his work. Paul’s been a troubling figure for me for two reasons. First, as a sensitive person, he’s personalized the attacks on him rather…
Watching The Progressive Bloggers
It would be painfully easy to make a career out of criticizing the left. Plenty of people do it. It’s entertaining but it doesn’t further the cause. Unfortunately I have real work to do, and can’t sign up for a daily routine. Maybe now and then I’ll just make the rounds.
Brad DeLong Watch: Terminological Nits with Caldwell
Brad takes issue with Chris Caldwell’s assertion that the republican party is not where wealth votes: It takes a somewhat weird failure to look at the cross-tabs to arrive at the conclusion that the Democratic Party is the party of "billionaires, academics, minorities and single women" and the Republican Party is the party of "landscape…
Daily Krugman Watch: On Cato and the Kochs
March 5th, 2012 Posted by CurtD Krugman jumps on the Kochs bandwagon today: I replied: Of the libertarian think tanks, Cato is the most policy oriented. The Kochs want to move it more into policy and further away from theory in order to help the republican party platform. (Which doesn’t necessarily bother those of us…
Karl Smith Watch: Learning From Fables
Crises, however, are not fables. They do not exist to teach us lessons or help us learn to mend our ways. The forces at work are utterly indifferent to the narratives we attach to them. Like everything else, they are simply a chain of events. One damned thing after another. Our task is to understand…
Paul Krugman Watch: Framing The Divide As Foolishness Rather Than Strategy Serves No One
Paul Krugman writes that the right wing strategy is based on false principles. But he misses the point: There were some technical problems with my earlier post on GOP deficit phoniness, although not in any way that changes the message. So, here’s an update. I use the intermediate-cost estimate from CRFB (pdf) for the four…
Liberty And Violence
Liberty is purchased with the tip of a spear, the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun. It is maintained by a hard constitution, the common law, and the mastery of the violence required to prevent its subversion. Righteous indignation is litte more than sound and fury signifying nothing, and those who…
A Propertarian Description Of Causality
Causality, like all human concepts, is a product of the necessity of humans to act, in order to alter the course of events, so that they can consume the difference. Causal understanding is then bounded by human perceptive ability, processing power, in real time. And from this perspective, whether something is causally replicable on one…
Defining Libertarianism
On Hillsdale Natural Law Review, Tyler O’Neil suggests that many conservatives aren’t libertarians despite using the term. Because Kinsella posted about it being a bit sloppy, I thought I’d use it as an excuse to try and write something definitive. THE LIBERTARIAN SPECTRUM “Libertarian Party” vs “Libertarian philosophy” vs “libertarian movement” vs “libertarian sentiments” A)…
An Example Of Scientistic Hubris In Economics
“Ben Bernanke has said that he could not save Lehman because it would be have been in violation of the law. My response is that it is not his responsibility to enforce the law. It is his responsibility to safe guard the lives of millions of people. … When the Capitol Police haul him away…
It’s Not That I Value Free Markets In The Abstract.
Last night, a wonderfully intelligent Canadian I’ve recently met referred to me as a ‘free marketer’. Which in Canadian lingo is a synonym for Libertarian. (We clearly need a Mises chapter up here in eastern Canada.) And, I’m fussing with writing a page the separates Propertarians from Anarcho Capitalists. If it was possible to regulate…
What I Learned From Lew Rockwell
There are few worthy intellectuals outside of Sowell who are capable of, or have succeeded, in altering the conservative public rhetorical framework. Our think-tanks are largely efforts at consolidating political parties behind the language of moral sentiments — not adapting the political system, nor providing outlets or alternatives to the progressive temptation to manipulate the…
Karl Smith Is A Better Public Intellectual Than Paul Krugman
Today, Karl reminds us that he has been harping for a long time on the fact that we could borrow money very cheaply during the recession — actually, with negative real costs — and put it to use in the economy. This post is another example of why Karl Smith is a better public intellectual…
An Propertarian Interpretation Of The Timeline Of Philosophy
The history of philosophy can be reduced to the five struggles: 1) First, between man’s primary desire to retreat into the limits of his senses in the face of evolving complexity, and his reluctant acknowledgement that he must learn and employ the tools of reason and calculation in order to extend those limited senses, despite…
Getting To Denmark
This has a distinctly Chinese authoritarian tone to it. And that’s OK. If we can admire the Chinese for their current economy we can admire the rest of their political edicts too: Economists, social scientists, public intellectuals and politicians all use the Nordic Fallacy: the goal of making every country like Denmark. ie: a small…
We’re Not Exporting Democracy. We’re Exporting Consumer Capitalism. And Our Military Is Very A Profitable Investment. (Really)
USEFUL IDEAS FOR DEFENSE OF CONSERVATIVE IDEAS On [online magazine] Counterpunch today, Paul Craig Roberts asks Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade? He starts with: The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the…
Defending Karl Smith
On Modeled Behavior, a commenter pulls an ad hominem: Karl, I won’t call you a hack–you aren’t, but the first part of that post contained breathtaking partisan quackery. And I replied: Jon. Karl is not a quack. He honestly holds his positions and he can articulate why he holds them. He may be the only…
A Followup On The Source of Western Individualism
I should follow up on my last post with this thought: 1) For the fist time in western history, military leadership has been effectively denuded of political power. Our politicians are not only not required to have demonstrated military experience, but our generals are conspicuously absent from the political stage. Their departure is partly due…
Yes. It’s OK. I know. I Realize I’m Adding The Virtue Of Violence Back Into Libertarianism.
Violence is a virtue not a vice. Like any resource it is scarce and can be put to good and ill uses. But try to create property rights without it. Try to hold your property rights without it. You can’t. No one has. No one will. Property is a product of the application of violence.…
The Source Of Western Individualism Is In Its Military Strategy
A letter to HBD_CHICK RE: “l’explication de l’idéologie” @HBD_CHICK First, I meant to write earlier so apologies for the delayed comment Second, translating your argument into an economist’s language: 1) “Signaling” is the term economists use to describe behavior that demonstrates fitness for mating. Status determines access to mates. Signaling conveys ‘status’. There are, statistically,…