Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.

Jane Mayer's The New Yorker article on Charles and David Koch. They have financed libertarian propaganda with more than 100 million dollars over more than 30 years. They founded and control the major libertarian think tanks Cato, Reason, Mercatus, and others. See: Koch think tanks at SourceWatch.

Posted in the Criticisms of the Cato Institute and Criticisms of George Mason U. Economics (and Mercatus) indexes.

Space Cadets

Space Cadets

Charlie Stross, the SF author, points out the fact that space colonization is incompatible with libertarian ideology, contrary to innumerable SF stories by major authors such as Heinlein.

That's to be expected: it's also incompatible with all historical society anyhow.  But there are particular circumstances involved in space.

Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets

Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, looks like a really good read.  This link leads to the introductory chapter, via Google Books.

She has the useful idea of noxious markets, which have one or more of the following characteristics:

* vulnerability (must take whatever bargain you're offered because cannot afford not to)

* weak agency (poor information or influence on economic decisions)

* extremely harmful outcomes for individuals (contract killings, for example)

* extremely harmful outcomes for society (vote buying, for example)

In such cases, she discusses alternatives such as blocking the market or alleviating the problems that arise.

Wealthcare: the Cult of Ayn Rand

Wealthcare: the Cult of Ayn Rand

Jonanthan Chait's big-picture view of Objectivism's influence after reading the two Rand biographies.  I would have posted this when it first came out, but it was difficult to find an ungated version.

Posted to the Reviews Of Books Related To Libertarianism and Criticisms of Objectivism (or Ayn Rand) indexes.

Here's the money line:
"But the basic inverted Marxism at the heart of her ideology has become the central focus of both modern conservative thought and Republican policy-making. (That ideology holds that the world is fundamentally divided between virtuous creators of wealth and lazy parasites, the identity of whom is the reverse of what Marx believed.)"