What's New...

It has been a productive month for adding and reorganizing indexes as I look for places to add new articles.  The big change is that Libertarian Blind Spots has been moved to the front page after Issues.  I don't want the front page to get too enormous, but it does provide fairly speedy access to the most important topics.

NEW 4/07/2013: Bitcoin is no Great Mystery [More...]

"One wonders why any libertarian would get excited about it (as it turns out, most do not!). [...] Bitcoins are just another speculative activity for those producing and buying them. It is just another type of gold buggery -- except even more ridiculous. [more...]

NEW 4/04/2013: Hodgson on the Essence of Old Institutional Economics [More...]

The neoclassical idea of basing economics on the individual utility-maximising agent is mistaken. Individuals and their action can be shaped by social and cultural factors and institutions. [more...]

NEW 4/04/2013: Hodgson on Methodological Individualism [More...]

What is it about complex social relations that invalidates both “methodological individualism” [...] The answer is “emergent properties” [...] [more...]

NEW 4/04/2013: Rochester Professor Wonders Why Rapists Shouldn’t Be Allowed to ‘Reap the Benefits’ of Passed Out Girls [More...]

Steven Landsburg attempts to compare and contrast potential "psychic harms" associated with pornography, environmentalism, and being raped while you are passed out.[more...]

NEW 4/04/2013: In which Steven Landsburg utterly flips out [More...]

Noah Smith assings us to read a Steven Landsburg post and assigns us to "think of four reasons why Landburg's post is utter nonsense." [more...]

NEW 4/04/2013: Just when you thought Libertarians couldn’t get any more revolting [More...]

Steven Landsburg asks if it is OK to rape somebody unconscious, as long as nothing tips off the victim. [more...]

NEW 4/04/2013: Steven Landsburg

A self-declared libertarian economist whose obliviousness defies belief. [more...]

NEW 4/03/2013: Capitalism Is Very Productive

With few exceptions, most people agree. But libertarians tend not to see the flip side of the coin that others see: capitalism needs government services and has huge flaws. Capitalism is only one tool, not an ultimate goal. [more...]

NEW 4/02/2013: Predictions That Never Come True

Medicare will cause the end of freedom! We're on the road to serfdom! The market will end discrimination! Regulation will bankrupt business! Libertarians are loaded with predictions and promises that will never come true, and ignore all the historical evidence they won't come true. [more...]

Private Property Is Not The Only Liberty

Many libertarians root all rights and freedoms in self-ownership and other property rights. The few who recognize other rights consider them trumped by even the slightest association with property. Property uber alles! [more...]

What they really care about [More...]

[...] what they really care about is low taxes, unfettered capitalism and private property. (Also too, guns.) The rest is apparently just window dressing so they don't look like mirthless, right wing drudges. [...] they won't grant that half the population even owns their own bodies or is free to control their own procreation. [more...]

Nozick's Natural Rights And Other Gut Feelings

Any time a natural rights author uses the term rights, you might as well substitute the word fairies. [more...]

The Entitlement Theory of Justice

Like most of Nozick's arguments in Anarchy, State and Utopia, the strength of the Entitlement Theory of Justice is illusory. It suffers critically from a lack of foundations and vulnerability to simple counterexamples. [more...]

Huben on Nozick

Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" can be quickly summarized as a game of hide-the-fallacy. After almost 40 years, it is still easy to identify new fallacies or describe the fallacies more obviously. [more...]

Index of Economic Freedom [More...]

The Heritage Foundation's and Wall Street Journal's annual report: a piece of ideological punditry masquerading as academic research. An international comparison, irrelevant to ordinary people. [more...]

Economic Freedom of the World [More...]

The Cato Institute's and Fraser Institute's annual report that gives a pseudoscientific measure of what the extremely rich and international corporations value. An international comparison, irrelevant to ordinary people. [more...]

Yglesias 2: A Robert Nozick Followup Or; How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Quit Ideal Theory [More...]

[...] I think the reason his remarks on politics were so brief and his argument in favor of his favored position so threadbare is precisely because he didn’t think it was possible to draw many interesting policy conclusions from his philosophical position. [more...]

Yglesias 1: Robert Nozick Was A Smart Man -- Too Smart To Embrace The Doctrine Of Anarchy, State, and Utopia [More...]

The fact that these kind of “harcore” views do such a poor job of withstanding scrutiny that the author of their most academically influential defense backed away from them is something people ought to be aware of. [more...]

Brian Barry on Robert Nozick [More...]

Excerpts from Brian Barry’s amusing review of Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, from 1975. (Political Theory August 1975 3: 331-336) Can you say "spurious intellectual respectability"? [more...]

Praxeology

Ludwig von Mises' anti-scientific, axiomatic, a priori methodology for supporting his preferred conservative political economy. Also used by Murray Rothbard. Ignored by academia, promoted by the crank vanity press Ludwig von Mises Institute. [more...]

Human Action

(The Scholar's Edition) Ludwig von Mises' enormous rant in favor of the pseudoscience of praxeology. A self-study course in convincing yourself you understand economics and all the academic and professional economists are mistaken. [more...]

The Turing Test: Who Can Successfully Explain Robert Nozick? [More...]

Brad DeLong provides a succinct explanation of the major reason why nobody should take Robert Nozick seriously. This is ridicule done right. [more...]

Electronic Frontier Foundation [More...]

Defending consumer rights in the digital world against corporate and industry attempts to profit by lawmaking to limit how we use products. A very dynamic organization as watchdog, muckraker, researcher, sponsor of bills and amicus in legal cases. [more...]

Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer? [More...]

"[...] there is room for considerable discussion of the most appropriate ways to subsidize innovation[...] None of the questions about "intellectual property" can be answered yelling "it's my property." [more...]

Intellectual Property Reform

Many others besides libertarians propose reform or abolition of intellectual property. Libertarians oppose it ideologically because it is obviously a government creation, but many others pragmatically question whether it actually advances the useful arts. [more...]

Academic Resources

Periodically, libertarians claim many criticisms are not of good quality. While there is no guarantee of quality (nor perfection) for academic publications, they do at least tend to be better documented and better argued. [more...]

Why libertarians apologize for autocracy [More...]

Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, the Cato Institute and Hans-Hermann Hoppe all have expressed preferences for autocratic rule instead of democratic rule. [more...]

Dictators And Other Anti-Democratic Authoritarians

A large number of notable libertarians have supported dictators and other anti-democratic authoritarians, primarily because they support big-business over the interests of ordinary people. [more...]

The Libertarian Map of Freedom [More...]

Corey Robin points out a few of the howlers in the Mercatus Center's “Freedom in the 50 States.” "Libertarian freedom: no abortion, everyone in jail, and the lights are on all the time. Free at last, free at last." [more...]

Libertarian Indexes Of Freedom

Over the years, many libertarian think-tanks and other Koch-funded organizations have created indexes of freedom that invariably represent the interests of large multinational corporations and the rich while ignoring the interests of ordinary people. This is obviously opposed to democratic ideas of political freedom. The entries in this index are evidence, not criticism. [more...]

Freedom in the 50 States [More...]

Classic pseudoscientific propaganda aimed at freedom of business from the democratic desires of real people. From the Mercatus Center. [more...]

Mises on Mixed Economies and Socialism: He is Incoherent [More...]

"On this subject, Mises was an ignorant and muddle-headed idiot, and it is not surprising that after 1945 he was ignored by serious economists." [more...]

Liberapedia: Libertarianism [More...]

A liberal community's analysis of libertarianism. [more...]

RationalWiki: Libertarianism [More...]

The skeptical community's analysis of libertarianism. [more...]

Mises and Hayek Dehomogenized?: A Note on a Schism in Modern Austrian Economics [More...]

Some fratricidal minutiae of Austrian economics. "Both Misesians and Hayekians live in a fantasy world, with respect to the price system." You can skip the technical parts to appreciate the fanaticism of both sides. [more...]

The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult [More...]

Murray Rothbard's scathing description of 1972 Objectivism as a cult. "Thus, power not liberty or reason, was the central thrust of the Randian movement." Excellent reporting. [more...]

Detroit's Libertarian Belle Isle Plan: Basically Gayer Fire Island With Lower Taxes [More...]

"... the endless passages of stilted dialogue about half-baked libertarian theory got boring, all and all, “Belle Isle: Detroit’s Game Changer” is the best homoerotic vanity press propaganda novel written by a senior housing developer yr Wonket has ever read." [more...]

Hell Isle [More...]

Rodney Lockwood wants to convert 982-acre Belle Isle park in Detroit into an independent nation, selling citizenships at $300,000 per. [more...]

Libertarian Mugged by Reality [More...]

Alex Beinstein, a U. of Chicago student, gets a job and loses his libertarianism. [more...]

The Classical Gold Standard Era was a Myth [More...]

"In reality, credit money (mostly unbacked by metal) was the predominant form of money through the entire period of the Classical Gold Standard." [more...]