What's New...

Another 96 or so entries.

Sources such as EnoughLibertarianSpam and my usual blog readings are providing plenty of new material.

 

NEW 9/06/2014: The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

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NEW 9/06/2014: Making Capitalism Fit For Society

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NEW 9/06/2014: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

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NEW 9/06/2014: Justice, Gender, And The Family

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NEW 9/06/2014: Markets Are Amoral

Markets are tools, with as much morality in them as hammers. Hammers can build, hammers can kill: so can markets. Libertarians pretend markets and the transactions within them are always moral, but they are not. [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: 25 Horrifying Images of the "Free" Market at Work [More...]

"We simply need to recognize that markets have no implicit moral authority." [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: Critical Map of the American Libertarian Movement [More...]

Descriptions of 8 of the most noisy libertarian groups. [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: Rothbard revisited [More...]

Conservative philosopher Edward Feser rebuts Gerald Casey's defense of Murray Rothbard. [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: Rothbard as a philosopher [More...]

Conservative philosopher Edward Feser says: "he seems incapable of producing even a minimally respectable philosophical argument, by which I mean an argument that doesn't commit any obvious fallacies or fail to address certain obvious objections." Ouch! Rothbard's argument for self-ownership is dissected. [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: The many divisions within libertarianism.

Libertarians are united only by a rhetoric of liberty. Socially, philosophically, and economically they have innumerable, unreconcilable divisions. If you ever want to side-track a group of libertarians, raise one of these divisions in discussion. [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: Nullification: Unlawful and Unconstitutional [More...]

A short Heritage Foundation Factsheet. There's probably much better out there. [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: Nullification, Neo-Confederates, and the Revenge of the old Right [More...]

"Behind the recent surge of nullification bills in state legislatures there is an ongoing battle for the soul of the GOP—and the future of the union itself. The nullification movement’s ideology is rooted in reverence for states’ rights and a theocratic and neo-Confederate interpretation of U.S. history. And Ron Paul, who is often portrayed as a libertarian, is the engine behind the movement." [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: Keeping It Real on 'neo-Confederate Libertarians' [More...]

"It's not for me to referee the intramural disputes within the libertarian movement. I'm sure they have no desire for me to try. But the neo-Confederates, the Lew Rockwells and that whole crew are fundamentally about white supremacy and nativism. And the Paul clan has been thick as thieves with those folks forever." [more...]

NEW 9/06/2014: Rand Paul's Confederacy Scandal Is Not an Anomaly -- Libertarianism Papers Over Deep Racism in America [More...]

Libertarianism truly is the velvet glove of a nice-sounding “freedom” policy that covers the iron fist of five hundred years of genocide and apartheid in America. [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Libertarian Velikovskyism

Understanding libertarians as like believers in Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision". [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: The worthless Lockean Fable of Initial Acquisition

The ahistorical labor theory of property fails in many ways. Including ignoring the evidence in front of our noses. [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Ayn Rand and the VIP-DIPers [More...]

Ayn Rand secretly took Social Security and Medicare. "In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest." [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Poll: 43 Percent Of Libertarians Don’t Understand The Term [More...]

"About 11 percent of Americans self-identify as libertarians and know what the term means" according to a Pew Research Center poll. [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: In search of libertarians [More...]

"In some cases, the political views of self-described libertarians differ modestly from those of the general public; in others there are no differences at all [...] None of the seven groups identified by the 2014 political typology closely resembled libertarians, and, in fact, self-described libertarians can be found in all seven." [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Beyond Red vs. Blue: The Political Typology [More...]

The Pew Research Center statistically identifies seven cohesive political clusters. None of them are libertarian. Includes a 23 question placement quiz. A vastly better methodology than the pseudoscientific The Worlds Smallest Political Quiz. 179 pages. [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: SourceWatch: Koch Brothers [More...]

The extensive SourceWatch wiki entry on the Koch brothers. [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Koch Exposed [More...]

The Center for Media and Democracy, publisher of ALEC Exposed, brings you this unique wiki resource on the billionaire industrialists and the power and influence of the Koch cadre and Koch cash. [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: I Was A Teenage Randroid [More...]

"Looking back, I try not to beat myself up about my four lost years as a Randroid[...] Despite the fact that everyday reality contradicts the tenets of Objectivism, Randroids hold Rand’s teachings as the supreme distillation of that reality. Cult leaders couldn’t hope for better." [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Economists Dissing Economics [More...]

A list of 20 or so quotes, mostly from well known economists, criticising mainstream economics. [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Daniel McFadden: Understanding better how people really make choices [More...]

"Some consumers suffer from “agoraphobia” or a fear of markets according to new research presented by Nobel laureate Daniel McFadden that throws doubt on the classical idea that people are driven by relentless and consistent pursuit of self-interest to maximise their well-being." [more...]

NEW 9/05/2014: Why Burning Man is not an example of a loosely regulated tech utopia [More...]

"But Burning Man is intensely regulated. It’s got its own police force. Gun control is absolute. Attendance is limited to a set number of people who can afford the not-cheap tickets. The very layout of Black Rock City is a paean to planning and organization. Central control is as much the essence of Burning Man as is hedonism and fire." [more...]

NEW 9/04/2014: Myth: There's no such thing as society… only individuals and families. [More...]

Perhaps the first important thing to note is that these are semantic games. Society is a "collection of individuals," even formally defined... The belief that humans are autonomous individuals leads to a logical error called the "fallacy of composition." [more...]

NEW 9/04/2014: There's no such thing as society… only individuals and families.

This famous Margaret Thatcher quote is philosophical twaddle. The same principle then applies to government, corporations, religions, etc. It is based on the unscientific and fallacious claim that individuals are the only valid level of analysis, common to the methodological individualism of Austrian Economics. [more...]

NEW 9/04/2014: Mont Pelerin Society

An international organization founded by Friedrich von Hayek to promote neoliberalism. Where the Koch brothers found their kindred spirits. One of the many vast, right-wing Conspiracies. [more...]

NEW 9/04/2014: Milton Friedman and David Glasner: Real and Pseudo Gold Standards [More...]

David Glasner identifies many flaws in Milton Friedman's paper “Real and Pseudo Gold Standards”. Brad DeLong interprets it as a political peacemaking tool, rather than a real academic paper. [more...]

NEW 9/04/2014: Currency

Libertarians generally complain about "fiat money" (paper money), and divide into gold or bitcoin camps. At this time, gold is simply a commodity: do gold standard libertarians want a government fiat to make it the currency? [more...]

NEW 9/01/2014: Incorrect History [More...]

"Soon enough, however, the Politically Incorrect Guide to American History starts to slip from conventional history into a Bizarro world where every state has the right to disregard any piece of federal legislation it doesn't like or even to secede [...] His source? Mainly the writings of the Southern pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun." [more...]

NEW 9/01/2014: League of the South

A secessionist, white supremacist and white nationalist organization that wants to recreate the Confederacy. [more...]

NEW 9/01/2014: Thomas Woods

A founding whackaloon of the secessionist League of the South and senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He specializes in revisionist history and popularizing Austrian Economics. [more...]

Reading Hamilton From the Left [More...]

An excellent overview of how Alexander Hamilton's Federalist, dirigiste vision of state-supported capitalism was the basis for the growth of American capitalism. As opposed to Jefferson's large, patrimonial, slave-owning, agrarian elites who exported primary commodities and imported finished manufactured goods from Europe. [more...]

Is "anarcho"-capitalism a type of anarchism? [More...]

An anarchist explanation of how anarcho-capitalism interferes with freedom and how capitalism is created by the state. [more...]

What are the myths of capitalist economics? [More...]

An anarchist overview of problems of economics, exploitation, distribution, big business, and false claims of capitalist benefits. [more...]

An Anarchist FAQ Webpage [More...]

A collaborative effort to present the basics of anarchism and correct misrepresentations by opponents (such as libertarians.) Updated and expanded versions of some Spunk Press items. [more...]

Anarcho-Hucksters: There is Nothing Anarchistic about Capitalism [More...]

An anarchist explains why anarcho-capitalism is not truly anarchist, and is generally undesirable to most people. [more...]

Living in a Second-Best World [More...]

An introduction to why deregulation and competition may not create their intended benefits, due to the Theory Of The Second Best. [more...]

Archimedes Shrugged: The Great Libertarian Racket

Hugh Akston's 2001 critical review of the Libertarian Party, emphasizing the capture of the party for personal profit by a Harry Browne clique. Scathing. [more...]

A Is A

Also known as the law of identity, is a worthless piece of philosophical drivel that plainly doesn't apply to the real world and seems to be unnecessary in mathematics. Objectivists use it as a shibboleth. [more...]

The New Jargon [More...]

Phil Agre discusses the rhetorical technology of association and projection used to subvert rationality in political argument. [more...]

Thoughts on the Florida Recount [More...]

Phil Agre discusses the common patterns of conservative propaganda employed in the Florida Recounts. These are very commonly encountered interacting with libertarians, especially projection. [more...]

The Crisis of Public Reason [More...]

Phil Agre provides one of the most compact insights into modern public discourse ever written. And wallops Hayek in the process. [more...]

Critics of Austrian Economics [More...]

An index of books and articles criticizing Austrian Economics. [more...]

AFT School Vouchers index [More...]

The American Federation Of Teachers has good summaries of the issues surrounding vouchers. [more...]

Milton Friedman: a study in failure [More...]

Milton Friedman's most successful influence in government policy was one he regretted: creating the income withholding tax. [more...]

Varieties of Institutional Failure [More...]

James Acheson describes failures of resource management by markets, private property, government, and communal management. Libertarian emphasis on the first two only is inappropriate. [more...]

Liberty, License or Anarchy? The Seductive Lie of Libertarianism [More...]

"I don't want to live in a "libertarian" society any more than I want to live in a society based upon absolute bondage imposed by an all-powerful government. Conservatives must seek - and actively work for -- a rational middle ground in which liberty is ensured within the framework of republican ideals, traditional societal norms and self-restraint." [more...]

The Myths of Social Security Crisis: Behind the Privatization Push [More...]

"Privatization of Social Security would not make the elderly and disabled go away. But it will end a system that requires high earners to help out low earners without forcing low earners to undergo the stigma of welfare." [more...]

Social Security Reform: Henry Aaron [More...]

Henry Aaron's 1998 testimony to the US Senate on why Social Security privatization proposals would be bad policy. [more...]

This is such a big heap of partisan right-wing bullshit that there must be a pony in there somewhere! [More...]

Daniel Davies explains to Brad DeLong that Milton Friedman was a political hack (in addition to being an excellent economist.) "The ideological core of Chicago-style libertarianism has two planks. 1. Vote Republican. 2. That's it." [more...]

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

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Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control

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Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays

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Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

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The Con Artistry of Charter Schools [More...]

Criminality, failure, self-dealing, misuse of funds, lack of oversight, political corruption, a trend to big business, and the political interference of ALEC have brought about a spate of FBI investigations of charter schools. [more...]

Two Treatises on Government

One of the major parents of early liberalism. The "mixing of labor to make property" claim comes from here. [more...]

John Locke Says Everything Belongs to Everyone [More...]

Locke straightforwardly claims that the poor have a right to the surplus property of the rich when they are in need. [more...]

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek [More...]

One of Brad DeLong's attempts to understand Hayek. "My hypothesis is that the explanation is theology: For Hayek, the market could never fail. For Hayek, the market could only be failed. And the only way it could be failed was if its apostles were not pure enough." [more...]

Inequality Is a Drag [More...]

"But American inequality has become so extreme that it’s inflicting a lot of economic damage. And this, in turn, implies that redistribution -- that is, taxing the rich and helping the poor -- may well raise, not lower, the economy’s growth rate." [more...]

A Basic Income for All [More...]

If you really care about freedom, give people an unconditional income. By Philippe Van Parijs, the major proponent of Basic Income. [more...]

Libertarianism: Finding a new Path [More...]

David Brin lambastes libertarians for a wide variety of ideological and moral failures: a collection of roughly a dozen articles. [more...]

Hayek, Friedman, and the Illusions of Conservative Economics [More...]

Robert Solow's review of "The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression" By Angus Burgin. His view of the Mont Pelerin Society's transition from the leadership of Friedrich von Hayek to Milton Friedman. [more...]

Efficiency, inequality, and the costs of redistribution [More...]

"Under the Kaldor-Hicks principle an outcome is efficient if the winners could compensate the losers. They don’t actually have to do it for the new outcome to qualify as efficient. So the winners of newly opened markets don’t have to compensate the workers who have lost jobs." [more...]

Phosphorus and Freedom: The Libertarian Fantasy [More...]

Is libertarian economics at all realistic? The answer is no. And the reason can be summed up in one word: phosphorus. [more...]

Pollution

While libertarians may claim they are opposed to pollution, their solutions (self-regulation, torts, etc.) are ineffective in the real world. Regulation is necessary to preserve the environmental commons. [more...]

How Increasing Income Inequality Is Dampening U.S. Economic Growth, And Possible Ways To Change The Tide [More...]

Notorious commie group Standard & Poor’s says inequality hurting economic growth. "The challenge now is to find a path toward more sustainable growth, an essential part of which, in our view, is pulling more Americans out of poverty and bolstering the purchasing power of the middle class." [more...]

Why the 'Libertarian Moment' Isn't Really Happening [More...]

"Young voters are not libertarian, nor even trending libertarian. Neither, for that matter, are older voters. The "libertarian moment" is not an event in American culture. It's a phase in internal Republican Party factionalism." [more...]

It Matters How Rich the Rich Are [More...]

"[...] the poor can be made not-poor by reducing the wealth/income of the rich in order to increase the wealth/income of the poor. In that sense, then, the richness of the rich is a cause of the poorness of the poor." [more...]

ALEC Free Markets Myth Debunked, But ALEC Won't Comment [More...]

Asked on camera to explain how ALEC's work against clean energy incentives while ignoring fossil fuel subsidies fits its "free markets" mission, ALEC had "no comment" for Greenpeace. [more...]

Yet Another Note on Mont Pelerin: Thinking Some More About Bob Solow’s View… [More...]

Brad DeLong sees a good Hayek, a bad Hayek, and a political economy Hayek. The three are inconsistent. He (citing Solow) compares their faults to those of Milton Friedman. [more...]

Asbestos Pushed in Asia as Product for the Poor [More...]

"A largely outlawed scourge to the developed world, it is still going strong in the developing one, and killing tens of thousands of people each year." [more...]

The Asbestos Industry

The asbestos industry suppressed information about the hazards of asbestos for decades, and has subsequently been facing enormous lawsuits over many thousands of deaths. All the while fighting regulation worldwide. [more...]

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens [More...]

A hugely important study showing that: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." [more...]

Scholar Behind Viral 'Oligarchy' Study Tells You What It Means [More...]

"A new political science study that's gone viral finds that majority-rule democracy exists only in theory in the United States -- not so much in practice." [more...]

Lucky Duckies and Fortunate Sons [More...]

On poverty and right wing reactions: "[...] the way people tend to react to a rigged game -- discouragement or selective blindness --are pretty common sense, yet are vociferously denied nonetheless by significant segments in the United States." [more...]

The Three Axioms at the Heart of Neoclassical Economics [More...]

"All in all, the three axioms that form the basis of neoclassical economics cannot be taken seriously." [more...]

No, it isn't only libertarians who care about civil liberties [More...]

"The fact is that civil liberties are rarely a priority in either political party. The libertarians in America tend to gather in the GOP while the civil libertarians like me tend to vote Democratic. We're a minority either way, but the civil libertarian liberals outnumber the libertarians substantially. " [more...]

The Basic Income Guarantee and Tautological Libertarianism [More...]

"Of course, right-libertarians tell us that they defend property rights because they believe in freedom. Now we see that they’re simply defining freedom as the defense of the property rights system they want to see." [more...]

Do People Really Dislike the State So Much? [More...]

A reversal of one point of "Seeing like a State": "Rather than fleeing from the state and resisting it, ordinary people are demanding the expansion of its authority in order to attain freedom from arbitrary and coercive local elites." [more...]

It isn’t your money [More...]

It might be your money if you lived under other institutions, rather than those of a taxing nation. But you don't. [more...]

Why We Fight Wars [More...]

Paul Krugman: "If you’re a modern, wealthy nation, however, war — even easy, victorious war — doesn’t pay. And this has been true for a long time." Except some profit in the military-industrial complex. [more...]

War Is Bad

Libertarians like to pretend that only they oppose war and that they oppose all war. Almost all people oppose war, and everybody has a point at which they will engage in war, even if only for defense. [more...]

Why Blacks Aren't Libertarians [More...]

"As long as leaving America’s most vulnerable unprotected remains a core piece of libertarianism, it is unlikely that the libertarian movement will find many allies in communities of color."[more...]

The Underachieving Education Business [More...]

Cries for market competition to improve education are false promises. "In the United States, for-profit universities have a six-year graduation rate of 22%, far below the 60% achieved by not-for-profit institutions." An ineffective self-regulation proposal is made. [more...]

Voluntary slavery (Wikipedia) [More...]

"In ancient times, this was a common way for impoverished people to provide subsistence for themselves or their family and provision was made for this in law." [more...]

Some problems with this traditionalist stuff [More...]

"The traditionalist has a formula. They write on a three-by-five card “defer to the status quo norms and traditions.” Then they also secretly scribble on the back “except when doing so conflicts with laissez-faire capitalism.” But we can leave that last part aside." [more...]

The Disease of American Democracy [More...]

An overview of why Americans have no influence over their government compared to the rich and corporations. "We have to establish a new countervailing power." [more...]

Bad Role Models: The Embattled Arrival of Honduras' Model Cities [More...]

"[...] ZEDEs seem likely to benefit only Honduras’ existing economic and political elites and foreign investors. The laws allowing ZEDEs have been designed to give their investors maximal legal and financial protection, leaving residents with only minimal legal recourse and democratic rights." [more...]

Reclaiming the Politics of Freedom [More...]

"[The politics of freedom] views the state the way the abolitionist, the trade unionist, the civil rights activist and the feminist do: as an instrument for disrupting the private life of power. The state, in other words, is the right hand to the left hand of social movement." [more...]

Say What? Israel Just Outlawed Water Fluoridation [More...]

"The terrifying logic follows that this disturbing pattern (like many libertarian ideologies) trumps all logic and sound medical advice; the way things are going, mandatory vaccination could be next on the cutting block." [more...]

No, America Is Not Turning Libertarian [More...]

"Advocacy organizations routinely sponsor polls that show the public supportive of their own position. Reason is the only magazine I know of that uses this tactic..." [more...]

Libertarianism is growing!

Nope. Koch-sponsored plutocratic control of government, media and other institutions is increasing, but that is not libertarianism. The number of people with libertarian leanings has remained constant for decades, and the Libertarian Party has long been in decline. [more...]

The Real Problem with the Broken Window Fallacy [More...]

"The BWF may or may not be useful for demonstrating a certain point, but it is not a model of the economy and it is not always and everywhere applicable to economic problems."