The Most Troubling in Mr. Murdoch’s Deposition

By Pierre Lemieux

Progress in knowledge and ultimately in economic growth and prosperity requires some freedom of speech and some economic freedom; and the more of them, the better. This is not to say that these freedoms only have benefits, but that they have more advantages than drawbacks. The deposition of Rupert Murdoch in the defamation lawsuit of .. MORE

Featured Comment

I'm sorry but 2023 is not the time to rail against conspiracy theorists, who are up about 12-1 in the past 3 or 4 years. And the use of Occam’s razor, where it has taken..

TMC, March 9, 12:08 am

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Business Economics

Fresh Air

By David Henderson | May 2, 2023

My wife and I went to see the movie Air on Saturday and I highly recommend it. If you follow this blog closely and have read the post about my Wall Street Journal op/ed, co-authored with Don Boudreaux, on Air and ESG, you might wonder how I could write an op/ed without seeing the movie. .. MORE

Institutional Economics

Hayek’s Critique of Unlimited Democracy

By Pierre Lemieux | May 2, 2023

I think the main interest of the third volume of Friedrich Hayek’s 1973-1978 trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty, titled The Political Order of a Free People, resides in its strong liberal critique of democracy as we know it. My review of this third volume is just out on Econlib. A few excerpts of my review .. MORE

Property Rights

Why Scott Alexander is wrong

By Scott Sumner | May 1, 2023

Scott Alexander pushes back against the argument that building more housing in a city will reduce housing prices in that city. He begins by noting that housing costs tend to be higher in places that are relatively dense, such as New York and San Francisco. He is aware that this argument is subject to the .. MORE

Economic History

How Many of Marx’s Interim Goals Have We “Accomplished?”

By David Henderson | May 1, 2023

  Today, May 1, is May Day. It is celebrated by communists in many countries. So I thought it would be a good idea to take stock and see where we are on the road to the communist ideal. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels laid out 10 interim measures on the .. MORE

Trade Barriers

The cost of economic nationalism

By Scott Sumner | Apr 30, 2023

The price of flying from the US to China has risen very sharply in recent years. The primary cause is economic nationalism. Here’s the Financial Times: The US has offered to grant Chinese airlines the same number of weekly flights between both countries as American carriers — but only if they agree not to fly .. MORE

Media Watch

What Does “Marginalized Group” Mean?

By Pierre Lemieux | Apr 30, 2023

In the zeitgeist, “marginalized” seems to mean any group that a mainstram speaker must love. A loved group is typically a set of individuals who deserve some privileges required by “social justice” as understood in the chattering classes, who complain of “micro-aggressions,” and who are not sufficiently empowered to boss others around. By a strange .. MORE

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Book Club

#ReadWithMe

Bruno Leoni and libertarianism

By Alberto Mingardi

Our Virtual Reading Group on Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law has been magnificent. The book is still capable of eliciting disagreement and suggesting new ideas. Several participants never read it before and were impressed, not least because of its style: Leoni’s lectures were reviewed and edited by Arthur Kemp, who perhaps also deserves some .. MORE

#ReadWithMe

Leoni, legislation and representation

By Alberto Mingardi

We’re coming to our third online reading group discussing Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law. So far the discussion was lively and insightful, a good reminder to me that the only way to really *know* a book is re-reading it periodically, as it may speak differently to you and you may notice things that you .. MORE

Book Club

Our Virtual Reading Group on Bruno Leoni

By Alberto Mingardi

During the month of February, I’ll have the pleasure to coordinate a Virtual Reading Group on Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law. I will write some rather impressionistic blog posts on the book, which I have read and read again over the years. Freedom and the Law is a short work, which emerged out of .. MORE

#ReadwithMe

#ReadWithMe

Bruno Leoni and libertarianism

By Alberto Mingardi

Our Virtual Reading Group on Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law has been magnificent. The book is still capable of eliciting disagreement and suggesting new ideas. Several participants never read it before and were impressed, not least because of its style: Leoni’s lectures were reviewed and edited by Arthur Kemp, who perhaps also deserves some .. MORE

#ReadWithMe

Leoni, legislation and representation

By Alberto Mingardi

We’re coming to our third online reading group discussing Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law. So far the discussion was lively and insightful, a good reminder to me that the only way to really *know* a book is re-reading it periodically, as it may speak differently to you and you may notice things that you .. MORE

#ReadWithMe

#ReadWithMe: Power Without Knowledge: Critiquing the Critique

By Chris Schwing

Up until the previous posts in this series, I’ve simply done my best to try to accurately explain the views of Jeffrey Friedman, as he laid them out in his final book Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy. While I agree with much of what he writes, there are specific points where I think .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

The State

By Anthony de Jasay

Though this book leans on political philosophy, economics, and history, it leans on each lightly enough to remain accessible to the educated general reader, for whom it is mainly intended. Its central theme—how state and society interact to disappoint and render each other miserable—may concern a rather wide public among both governors and governed. Most .. MORE

The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy

By Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan

The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution

By Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan

“F. A. Hayek and the Rebirth of Classical Liberalism”

By John N. Gray

In the recent revival of public and scholarly interest in the values of limited government and the market order, no one has been more centrally significant than Friedrich A. Hayek. His works have figured as a constant point of reference in the discussions both of the libertarian and conservative theories of the market economy; they .. MORE