What's New.

Lots of new indexes and articles at the new site!

NEW 7/04/2012: Coercion vs. Freedom: BHL vs. BRG [More...]

John Holbo explains Bertram, Robins and Gourvitch’s post criticizing the Bleeding Heart Libertarians views on liberty and voluntary slavery. He then explains how Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok make the same errors. Follow the link to the original post. [more...]

NEW 7/03/2012: Listen Libertarians! Part 5 [More...]

Part 5 of David Ellerman's review of John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness. The property invisible hand mechanism. [more...]

NEW 7/03/2012: Listen Libertarians! Part 4 [More...]

Part 4 of David Ellerman's review of John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness. Liberalism’s faux "inalienable rights" theory. [more...]

NEW 7/03/2012: Listen Libertarians! Part 3 [More...]

Part 3 of David Ellerman's review of John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness. The misframing about "productive property". [more...]

NEW 7/03/2012: Listen Libertarians! Part 2 [More...]

Part 2 of David Ellerman's review of John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness. The misframing of property theory. [more...]

NEW 7/03/2012: Listen Libertarians! Part 1 [More...]

Part I of David Ellerman's review of John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness. The fundamental consent-versus-coercion misframing. [more...]

Libertarians Sucking At The Tit Of The Welfare State

While many libertarians denounce the welfare state, many famous libertarians hypocritically enjoy the benefits. [more...]

Ron Paul Is Against Social Security Even While He Is For It [More...]

Ron Paul is collecting Social Security even while denouncing it. [more...]

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% [More...]

Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz describes where our inequality comes from, how bad it is, and the likely consequences. [more...]

Social Justice

People who tend to the Libertarian side are usually people who have yet to experience the need for financial assistance or social justice. [more...]

Adam Smith

Adam Smith, "father of capitalism" and author of The Wealth Of Nations, was a liberal, not a libertarian. He supported an enormous range of government functions that libertarians generally do not. [more...]

The Horror of Rothbardian Natural Rights [More...]

Murry Rothbard argues for legal rights of parents to kill their children by starvation. [more...]

Union decline and rising inequality in two charts [More...]

"By most estimates, declining unionization accounted for about a third of the increase in inequality in the 1980s and 1990s." Union decline is a result of conservative policy. [more...]

Profit-Driven Surveillance and the Spectrum of Freedom [More...]

Matt Stoller alerts us to the problem of profit-driven surveillance, and how corporations can make us pay for our liberties based on it. [more...]

Corporate Threats to Liberty

Corporations also threaten liberty. The private prison industry has every incentive to sponsor laws to increase incarceration. Corporations have huge incentives to invade your privacy by tracking you, recording your purchases, your messages, etc. Government could then legally buy this information, rather than getting a court order to do it as part of an investigation. [more...]

Debunking Austrian Economics 101 [More...]

31 collections of posts from the blog "Social Democracy For The 21st Century: A Post Keynesian Perspective". An enormous scholarly resource for refuting numerous Austrian Economics claims. Highly recommended. [more...]

Property-Owning Democracy and the Demands of Justice [More...]

Property-Owning Democracy is John Rawls' idea of justice appropriate to societies committed to both individual freedom and democratic equality. The goal is to limit runaway inequalities which restrict liberties, especially of the worst off. Inequalities that benefit the worst off are permitted. [more...]

John Rawls

John Rawls' theory of justice has been the major theory of liberty and justice in the latter part of the 20th century. Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopiawas merely one of many reactions to Rawls. [more...]

The Battle for the Cato Institute [More...]

Plutocrat Charles Koch battles autocrat (and sycophant to other plutocrats) Ed Crane for who gets to use the Cato Institute as their catspaw. [more...]

Defending Boilerplate Hayek [More...]

Some plausible advice on interpreting Hayek, once you understand that "The Great Society" is society run in the interests of the wealthy few. Starts with "Arguing Hayek can be unclear is arguing water can be wet." [more...]

Free Market Double Standards 1.0 [More...]

Hilarious collection of examples of self-contradiction by free marketeers. [more...]

Free Market Double Standards 5.0 [More...]

The fifth hilarious collection of examples of self-contradiction by free marketeers. [more...]

Fascism and Keynesianism? [More...]

"There is a tired and ignorant rhetorical trick of libertarians: to conflate Keynesianism with fascism, or the economics of fascism." Also points out Ludwig von Mises early work for a fascist and praise for Mussolini. [more...]

Daniel Davies Watches The Hayekian Yahoos Attack The Late Tony Judt [More...]

Brad Delong describes the three Hayeks: the brilliant, bonkers, and wrong. [more...]

Self-made men, debunked [More...]

A summary of Brian Miller and Mike Lapham's book “The Self-Made Myth: The Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed”.[more...]

We do not owe each other anything because we are self-made.

A favorite libertarian myopia! Conveniently forget all the contributions that went into making us successes. [more...]

Free Market Double Standards 4.0 [More...]

The fourth hilarious collection of examples of self-contradiction by free marketeers. [more...]

Redistribution (propaganda sense)

Every corporation is an autocratic socialist organization that redistributes income to the employees and owners. Why don't libertarians complain about that?[more...]

Neither Real, nor Business, nor Cycles [More...]

Noah Smith eviscerates RBC (Real Business Cycle Theory) using tools bequeathed by Voltaire, Larry Summers and Simon Wren-Lewis. "Label-the-Residual Economics." [more...]

Doesnt Hong Kong show the potentials of free market capitalism? [More...]

"[...] the reality of Hong Kong was one marked by collusion between big business and the state and that in key areas the regime was much more "socialist" than its British counterpart [...]" Part of An Anarchist FAQ. [more...]

Chile

Enacted sweeping "liberal" reforms under dictator Augusto Pinochet (on the advice of Milton Friedman's students) which resulted in widespread economic failure and murder of innumerable opponents. Saved later by nationalization of the copper industry. [more...]

Singapore

Another entrepot with single party rule, mandated health and retirement savings, public education, etc. [more...]

Hong Kong

An entrepot that doesn't pay for its own defens, with government ownership of all land, and a host of government mandates. [more...]

Claimed Examples Of Libertarianism

Libertarianism has never been implemented anywhere, but libertarians are armed with many "examples" to show that it could work. Examples such as Hong Kong, Chile and Singapore are uniformly misleading or false. [more...]

Milton Friedman: Being wrong is no hindrance when you empower the rich [More...]

"An obituary for Milton Friedman. Being consistently wrong does not stop you being considered a great economist, as long as it is what the ruling elite wants to hear." An anarchist viewpoint. [more...]

Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision [More...]

George Lakoff's handbook for progressive framing and political change. A short downloadable book. [more...]

Textbooks and Drugs [More...]

Tony Cookson takes Greg Mankiw to task for presenting textbooks as a competitive model. He points out that the textbook market suffers from most of the imperfect competition problems of big pharma, explaining $268 textbook prices. [more...]

What is the Matter with Libertarianism? [More...]

Peter Corning points out a number of frequent libertarian assumptions that just don't fit reality. [more...]

Libertarians, Conservatives and Human Nature [More...]

Eddie SantoPrieto points out that libertarian (and especially objectivist) models of humans are grossly at odds with anthropological science. [more...]

The ugly delusions of the educated conservative [More...]

Chris Mooney explains the "smart idiot" effect of conservatism (and libertarianism is a form of conservatism): "politically sophisticated or knowledgeable people are often more biased, and less persuadable, than the ignorant." [more...]

Why DO Reeps and Libbies Suffer from the Smart Idiot Syndrome? [More...]

A lament that even the smartest people still have the same vulnerabilities to disinformation (agnotology) outside their area of specialization. In this case, global warming. [more...]

Food and Drug Administration

The FDA plays a very important part in moving health care from "buyer beware" to the informed consumers that market advocates think are necessary for optimum results. Labeling and evidence-based claims only infringe freedom to mislead the gullible for a buck. [more...]

The Seven Biggest Economic Lies [More...]

Libertarians have repeated all these lies: small wonder, they are promoted by the Koch brothers. Robert Reich provides very short rebuttals to each of them.[more...]

Center for Economic and Policy Research [More...]

A sane think-tank that does not start with the Koch brother's right-wing/libertarian alternative-universe framing. Balanced progressive examination of issues, often based on original research. [more...]

The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive [More...]

Dean Baker's online book describing how upwards distribution through markets is a result of government policy (due to capture by the rich), and how to change to more equitable polices. [more...]

Various Lies From The Libertarian Cato Institute [More...]

"... professional libertarians need to lie a lot about history and current events." [more...]

Also, Your Record Sucks [More...]

"The reason no one takes most libertarians seriously is because they keep voting for people who do a great job securing economic “liberty,” [...] but they do a horrible job reversing any of the negative civil liberties trends." [more...]

The difference between civil libertarians and selfish jerks [More...]

Civil liberties are independent of libertarianism, the left, and the right. "... using civil libertarianism to sell libertarian ideology, particularly in this case, is a misdirection." [more...]

It is Okay -- Call Republicans Social Darwinists [More...]

Libertarians too. The main guiding principle of Social Darwinism is a defense of the free market as a moral arbiter, rather than merely a tool for creating wealth. The consequence is the idea that harsh inequality is both necessary and right. [more...]

Unionization

With anarchist exceptions, libertarians align with their wealthy funders to oppose unions. Supposedly unions have special privileges from government: but these libertarians somehow don't notice that corporations have special privileges from government. John Kenneth Galbraith pointed this out in his theory ofcountervailing powers. [more...]

The Fallacy of Tuna Fish Economics [More...]

Andrei Shleifer caught propagandizing for privatization at Harvard. "Of all people, Professor Shleifer should know that contracting out and privatization do not always work as advertised." He was the director of the corrupt privatization of post-Soviet Russia. [more...]

Privatization

There is an enormous history of privatization which shows that while it is sometimes beneficial, often it does not give the results its proponents claim. Privatization is often a form of crony capitalism, and often results in a different and less desirable product. [more...]

Court Libertarians on Parade [More...]

Cato Unhinged attributes the CATO/Koch infighting to Ed Crane badmouthing David Koch. In addition, a scathing description of the underhanded political machinations of a supposedly "pure" organization. [more...]