Code Blue: How America Can Help Heal Greenland’s Rural Health Crisis

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , ,

The vast, ice-locked expanse of Greenland is facing a quiet, structural catastrophe. While global powers look north to debate shipping lanes, rare-earth minerals, and geopolitical positioning in the Arctic, a human crisis is unfolding across the territory’s remote coastal settlements. Greenland’s rural healthcare system is straining under the weight of persistent staffing shortages, extreme geographic isolation, and an overwhelming infrastructural deficit.

As America expands its diplomatic and strategic footprint in the Arctic and High North Atlantic, Washington can no longer afford to view Greenland solely through the lens of national defense and radar stations. Addressing Greenland’s rural health crisis is not just a moral imperative; it is a critical opportunity for the United States to practice meaningful, localized diplomacy that secures long-term stability and goodwill in a vital region.

The recent public rejection of a U.S. hospital ship by Greenlandic and Danish officials was a triumph of nationalist pride, but a tragedy for the island’s most vulnerable residents. The political friction began on February 21, 2026, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he was deploying a “great hospital boat” to Greenland, claiming the population lacked proper care.

The response from Nuuk and Copenhagen was almost instantaneous. Within hours, Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen issued a sharp, public refusal—stating “it’s a no thank you from here”—while Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen swiftly backed his rejection, defending the quality of the island’s Nordic welfare system.

In dismissing the U.S. President’s generous offer so rapidly as an unnecessary political stunt, the Greenlandic and Danish leaders proudly pointed to Greenland’s free, nationalized healthcare system. Yet, this defensive reaction masks a grim reality familiar to anyone living outside the capital of Nuuk: for Greenland’s remote and isolated settlements, access to that “free” healthcare is often a distant, and at times dangerous, illusion. While urban leaders embrace their ideological purity from modern, state of the art facilities, rural Greenlanders face severe doctor shortages, long transport times for emergencies, and an ongoing specialist crisis. In a vast, Arctic nation where geography is the ultimate barrier to the practice of medicine, a floating, fully-equipped hospital ship is not an insult to sovereignty—it is a highly practical, life-saving solution to the undeniable failures of rural Arctic healthcare.

Anatomy of an Arctic Health Crisis

Greenland operates a universal healthcare system that is free at the point of use. However, equity in theory does not translate to equity in geography. For most of the island’s 57,000 residents—scattered across dozens of isolated villages accessible only by helicopter, dog sled, or boat—access to basic medical care is akin to a lottery. The system is suffocated by an unsustainable reliance on short-term, rotational medical professionals traveling from Denmark. These practitioners rarely stay long enough to learn Greenlandic or understand local cultural nuances. This in turn exhausts the few permanent, bilingual local health workers, driving severe burnout and rapid turnover.

In the remotest of settlements, basic lifesaving tools like defibrillators are frequently absent. When emergencies strike, the territory relies on expensive, logistically complex medevacs. At a rate of 7.7 evacuations per 1,000 inhabitants every year, these flights drain tens of millions of dollars from an already strained public budget. Because preventive care is practically non-existent in the rural periphery, chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease and cancer are routinely diagnosed at late, terminal stages.

Compounding these structural challenges is a profound legacy of historical trauma. The revelation of protracted, forced contraception campaigns enacted by Danish authorities in recent decades has left deep scars. It has fostered a persistent, understandable distrust of institutional medical systems among Indigenous communities.

Washington to the Rescue

For decades, America’s relationship with Greenland has been transactional, anchored by the strategic outpost of Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base). However, in an era of renewed Arctic competition, hard military power is no longer enough to maintain durable alliances.

The Greenlandic government currently faces an estimated one-billion-kroner (US $150 million+) deficit just to modernize its clinical infrastructure and bridge the health equity gap between rural settlements and the capital, Nuuk. By actively intervening to help close this gap, the United States can deploy a strategy of medical diplomacy. This approach will alleviate human suffering while demonstrating that American partnership brings tangible, life-saving benefits to everyday Greenlandic citizens.

An Action Plan for American Medical Diplomacy

The United States possesses the exact technological, logistical, and clinical infrastructure needed to revolutionize rural health care in Greenland. To achieve maximum impact, Washington should deploy a targeted, three-tiered action plan:

1. Scale AI-Powered, Pan-Arctic Telehealth Collaboration

The greatest barrier to rural healthcare in Greenland is distance. Rather than trying to solve this in isolation, the United States should integrate Greenland into a broader, pan-Arctic telehealth network. By creating a collaborative digital medical grid between Alaska’s tribal health organizations—which have decades of experience in remote, sub-zero care—and Greenland’s regional clinics, providers can seamlessly share best practices, billing efficiencies, and translation strategies.

Crucially, this pipeline can be supercharged with Artificial Intelligence. Washington can fund the deployment of automated AI diagnostic software to rural Greenlandic nursing stations. These algorithms can instantly evaluate X-rays, spot early-stage oncological abnormalities on skin scans, and read basic blood work without waiting days for a specialist in Nuuk or Copenhagen. By pairing low-Earth orbit satellite arrays with AI triage tools, minor health issues can be resolved locally, stopping the financial bleed of unnecessary medical evacuations.

2. Deploy Seasonal U.S. Hospital Ships for Direct Care

While digital health addresses daily care, Greenland’s immense surgical backlogs require physical intervention. The United States Navy maintains the world’s most capable floating medical platforms. Washington should institutionalize annual, seasonal deployments of U.S. hospital ships (such as the USNS Comfort or USNS Mercy classes, or newly designed agile medical vessels) to the High North Atlantic and Arctic during the ice-free summer months.

Operating as high-profile medical diplomacy, these ships would anchor off regional hubs like Qaqortoq, Sisimiut, or Ilulissat. Over a multi-week deployment, American naval surgeons and dental corps could perform hundreds of elective surgeries, joint replacements, and advanced dental procedures that rural Greenlanders currently wait years to receive. This surge of direct, high-impact clinical aid would immediately relieve the strain on Greenland’s domestic budget while forging deep cultural goodwill directly with the populace.

Indeed, commissioning a new, dedicated medical icebreaker designed for maritime health delivery to Arctic coastal villages would provide a critical, helpful new layer to the region’s much-needed rural healthcare infrastructure. Geopolitical grandstanding aside, achieving this logistical breakthrough requires cooperation over pride. America can genuinely help by offering specialized maritime medical expertise and use of its hospital ships, but Denmark can and must do more too, leveraging its substantial wealth and sovereign responsibility to co-fund a permanent mobile care solution for the citizens it aims to protect.

3. Establish a High North Atlantic and Arctic Medical Scholarship Program

True healthcare sustainability cannot be imported; it must be grown from within. The U.S. State Department should launch a fully funded scholarship and residency pipeline inviting Greenlandic students to train at top-tier American medical and nursing schools.

This program must place special emphasis on rural medicine, telehealth deployment, and culturally informed community health care. In exchange, graduates would commit to returning to Greenland’s rural clinics for a designated period. This initiative would systematically build a permanent, bilingual, and Indigenous medical workforce, directly dismantling the cycle of foreign medical dependency.

Rx for Change

True Arctic security is impossible to achieve when the region’s inhabitants are left vulnerable to preventable systemic health crises. The structural deficiencies in Greenland’s rural healthcare network require resources, technology, and logistical capabilities that Nuuk cannot assemble alone.

By stepping forward with an innovative blend of AI-driven pan-Arctic telehealth networks, seasonal hospital ship deployments, and long-term educational pipelines, the United States can help heal a profound humanitarian rift in the High North Atlantic and Arctic. In doing so, America will prove that its commitment to the Arctic is measured not just in military muscle, but in the health, dignity, and longevity of the people who call the Arctic home

After Greenland’s Liberation: Inuit Sovereign Expansion

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Greenland and Nunavut Could Join Forces Under a U.S. Shield

June 21 — just two weeks away — marks not only the summer solstice, but in Canada it’s also National Indigenous Peoples Day, a day that celebrates the resilience of the Arctic’s original inhabitants. Yet, celebration without sovereignty seems in many ways premature and incomplete.  True self-determination for Inuit still requires a profound political transformation.

Indeed, the path to a strong, viable and unified Inuit state runs through Nuuk, Iqaluit, and Washington. By leveraging Greenland’s path to independence from Denmark and negotiating with President Trump, and then more tightly integrating Greenland and Nunavut under America’s defense and economic umbrella, Inuit can finally achieve a cohesive and sovereign Arctic state, an historic first.

The current geopolitical map fragments the Inuit nation across artificial colonial borders. Greenland operates under Danish self-rule, while Nunavut remains a territory within the Canadian confederation. Both face a shared vulnerability: vast geographic scale, small populations, and intensifying pressures from Arctic and “near-Arctic” neighbors Russia and China (and, 80 years earlier, Germany and Japan).

Neither Nuuk nor Iqaluit possesses the economic or military heft to secure the top of the world alone. A bold diplomatic realignment is required to bridge this divide. This alignment would not be entirely unprecedented, but rather an historic restoration.

During World War II, the United States stepped in as the de facto protector of both regions. Following the 1940 Nazi occupation of Denmark, Washington established a protective mandate over Greenland to secure its strategic cryolite mines and critical Arctic weather stations. Simultaneously, the U.S. Army’s Air Forces built a massive and vital airfield at Frobisher Bay — now modern-day Iqaluit — to ferry aircraft to the European front. This shared history of wartime continental defense laid the early structural and geopolitical foundations for a unified North American Arctic.

Greenland holds the key to unlocking this future. As Greenland moves closer to full independence from Denmark, it faces a gathering financial and security vacuum. Denmark’s annual subsidy cannot be easily replaced, and an independent Greenland cannot defend its massive coastline and vast EEZ. 

This is where strategic pragmatism meets historic opportunity. President Trump has famously viewed Greenland through a lens of immense strategic and economic value. Rather than resisting this interest, Greenlandic leadership should lean into it.

Instead of pivoting to Copenhagen’s familiar embrace, Nuuk could instead leverage its ongoing (if fractious) discussions with Washington to flip the script and directly negotiate a compact of free association with President Trump. Turning the table like this has been done before, and is a quirk of Trump statecraft: Just ask the Taliban, which eventually learned the frenemy of my enemy is my new best friend.

Under a COFA framework, Greenland could achieve full sovereignty and a seat at the UN, while granting the USA exclusive and perpetual military basing rights and a mandate over its external defense (powers America largely has already, through its bilateral defense treaty with Denmark, its leadership role at NATO, and its predominance at NORAD). 

This would solve Greenland’s security dilemma and inject massive American infrastructure investment into its domestic economy, replacing Danish financial dependence with American strategic partnership.

With a secure, America-protected Greenland established, the second phase of Inuit unification can begin: with its sovereign expansion and integration of Nunavut. Nunavut’s current status within Canada limits its economic autonomy and binds its security to Ottawa’s chronically underfunded, albeit newly reaffirmed, Arctic defense efforts. To break free of its stagnation, Nunavut could exercise its right to self-determination, secede from Canada, and merge with a newly independent Greenland to form a unified greater Inuit state.

This expanded Inuit state could logically find safety under a COFA negotiated by Greenland, and once Ottawa came to accept Nunavut’s secession, all parties could amicably remain part of reimagined NORAD. For Washington, extending its Greenland defense umbrella over Nunavut is logical and efficient. It would create a contiguous, secure North American Arctic buffer, streamlining continental defense under a single, unified command structure. 

For Inuit, it rejoins families, ecosystems, and resources separated for generations by western cartography. Nunavut could offer Greenland its distinct, multilevel governance model wedding its three decade-long settled Indigenous land claim treaty with its quarter-century of territorial self-governance, deftly balancing tradition and modernity. This would be transformative.

Critics may argue that trading Canadian or Danish oversight for an American protectorate merely swaps one master for another. But this misunderstands the nature of modern protectorates, such as Palau and the Marshall Islands. Under a COFA, an Inuit state would retain complete domestic sovereignty, cultural autonomy, and control over its natural resources while leveraging its new economic and educational links to America. The United States would handle the financial and logistical burden of defense, leaving the Inuit free to govern their homeland.

On the upcoming 21st day of June, a day infused with so much symbolic meaning across the North, we cannot forget that the Arctic is melting, and that a geopolitical scramble for its resources is accelerating. The status quo leaves the Inuit homeland divided, and exposed to global power struggles. On this year’s National Indigenous Peoples Day, let us look beyond symbolic recognition. 

A sovereign Inuit state, anchored by Greenland, expanded by Nunavut, and shielded by American power, is neither a radical nor imperial fantasy. It is instead a realistic pathway to enduring Arctic autonomy, and a true Inuit sovereign restoration.

An Arctic Deal of the Century: Why It’s Time to Liberate Greenland

Barry Scott Zellen, PhD Liberty , , , , , ,
The old way of running the world is broken. For decades, Washington politicians sat back while China bought up global supply chains and Russia re-militarized its frontiers from Eastern Europe to the High North. European empires faded long ago, yet Copenhagen continues to hold onto Greenland — a massive landmass forty times its size — relying on outdated colonial attitudes and hierarchies that hold the Greenlandic people back from their true potential.

When President Donald J. Trump first spoke about acquiring Greenland years ago, the media laughed. They couldn’t see the big picture. Just as the critics of 1867 mocked “Seward’s Folly” before Alaska proved to be a geopolitical masterstroke, the establishment failed to understand Trump’s profound Sewardian vision. They didn’t comprehend the vast, untapped wealth under the ice or the incredible strategic value of that geography.

Today, the world increaingly sees that Trump was entirely right. But we aren’t looking to buy islands anymore. We are looking to make deals that unleash freedom and secure the western hemisphere. It’s time to execute a modern Sewardian breakthrough. It’s time for a new Arctic North American vision. It’s time for a sovereign, independent Greenland.

True sovereignty requires economic strength. Right now, Greenland is trapped in a cycle of financial dependence, relying on Denmark to fund half its public budget. Yet this dependency is not an accident; it’s the direct byproduct of a shameful legacy of Danish colonial oppression. For generations, Copenhagen enforced policies of forced assimilation and cultural erasure that amounted to a form of cultural genocide against the native Greenlandic population.

This urban engineering was epitomized by the infamous ⁠Blok P, built in Nuuk in 1966. This massive, soulless concrete monolith housed (imprisoned) roughly one percent of the island’s population, tearing Inuit families away from their traditional hunting communities and packing them into cramped quarters utterly alien to their way of life. Though the toxic, asbestos-ridden structure was mercifully demolished in 2012, its architectural ghost remains a symbol of top-down dislocation that fractured the social fabric of the island and suppressed Inuit language and identity before the era of Home Rule (1979), and later Self-Rule (2009), began.

Nowhere is this dark history clearer than in the horrifying “Spiral Case” (Spiralkampagnen), where Danish authorities fitted thousands of Inuit women and girls with intrauterine devices without their consent or knowledge in a calculated effort to suppress the Greenlandic birth rate. Copenhagen’s recent official apology comes too late and rings too hollow — a classic, half-hearted “sorry, not sorry” political gesture — to undo decades of systemic trauma.

Greenland’s deep-seated, manufactured dependency blocks the world’s largest island from fully healing and independently stepping onto the world stage. Meanwhile, American technology, defense and resource companies stand ready to invest billions of dollars to responsibly extract Greenland’s massive deposits of critical minerals and rare earth elements. These are the exact materials we need to build our future, power our military, and eliminate our supply chain dependence on China.

We have a proven American blueprint for this exact kind of success, showing that resource development does not require cultural destruction. Look at how we empowered our own northernmost citizens: the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) unleashed a wave of historic business innovation by creating highly successful native corporations that transformed the regional economy. A decade later, the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) legally protected and preserved vital Indigenous hunting, fishing, and subsistence traditions.

By channeling the same forward-thinking statecraft that defined the Alaska purchase and its subsequent economic model, we can do the exact same thing for Greenland — combining native-owned, local and regional corporate economic engines with ironclad protections for ancestral ways of life. Further, by negotiating a Compact of Free Association (COFA), Greenland and America can create a win-win partnership built for the 2020s — 55 years after ANCSA, nearly 160 years after Seward’s prescient Alaska purchase, and a full 250 years since the founding of our beloved republic.

Under such a deal, Greenland will gain total domestic independence, and Greenlanders will keep their culture, their land, their flag, and their distinct identity. In return, the United States military will provide an ironclad security guarantee, installing an advanced aerospace missile shield — Golden Dome — to protect our shared northern skies from hostile powers, boldly continuing a tradition of innovative Arctic megaprojects in defense of our mutual security established in the 1950s by the DEW Line and its Greenland extension, the DYE stations.

This isn’t about empire building; it’s about empire breaking. We’re offering Greenlanders a seat at the table, as partners, fulfilling our bold vision for continental security. Our allies in Europe and our neighbors in Canada have nothing to fear from a free Nuuk: a secure, self-funded, independent Greenland will act as a permanent anchor of peace and stability in the global North.

It’s a smart deal, a beautiful deal, and a necessary deal for our national and hemispheric security. And with it, the era of Arctic neglect will be officially over — at long last.

“Must Liberalism be Atomistic?” by Jacob Rodriguez

Brandon Christensen Culture, Philosophy , , ,

During his inauguration ceremony, the newly elected mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani pledged to run the city as he had run his campaign, as a committed socialist. He stirred much discussion during his speech when he claimed that “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” A variety of public thinkers and politicians commented on this statement, taking it as a moment to reflect on what they perceived as a referendum on uniquely American ideals.

[Click here to read the entire essay]

Jacob Rodriguez is a PhD candidate in political science at Baylor University. Email him at jacob_rodriguez12@baylor.edu.

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“India, the Jigsaw Piece that Didn’t Fit” by Jens Norrby

Brandon Christensen History , , ,

It is reasonable to imagine a wave of unease washing over the members of the Imperial Legislative Council in Delhi on 18 March 1919. The council had just rushed through the passing of what would be known as the Rowlatt Act, named after the chair of its producing committee, which extended the wartime powers of the police to make use of normally extra-judicial measures to curb civil unrest. Indian soldiers played a decisive role in the British imperial forces, and there was a widespread expectation that India ought to become more self-governing as part of the settlement in the postwar period.

However,

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Jens Norrby is a historian at the University of Gothenburg. You can send mail to him at jens.norrby@lir.gu.se.

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Print version of 4.1 (2026) is now available

Brandon Christensen Current Events ,

You can snag a copy by going here. The Spring 2026 issue clocks in at a whopping 417 pages.

To paying subscribers, yours is in production and should reach your doorsteps before the end of the month. If they don’t, shoot me an email.

Iso Q is my new baby, so I would really appreciate your support for its continued development. NOL is all grown up and in college now.

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“Betting on Better Governance” by George Agbesi & Joshua D. Ammons

Brandon Christensen Economics , , , ,

Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law. — F. A. Hayek

At one point, Gordon Tullock thought taxi medallions were inefficient but intractable institutions, a classic example of what he called the transitional gains trap. The medallion system persisted not because it served the public, but because the rents it generated were capitalized into medallion prices, making any reform politically impossible. Then came Uber, and within a matter of years this supposedly permanent institution crumbled. What if a similar technology shock could do the same for societies lacking the rule of law?

[Click here to read the entire essay]

George Agbesi is a student and Research Assistant at the Stephenson Institute for Classical Liberalism, Wabash College. Joshua D. Ammons is Scholar-in-Residence at the Stephenson Institute for Classical Liberalism, Wabash College. Send Joshua mail at ammonsj@wabash.edu.

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“Of Lamb and Man” by Onyinyechi Ndukaire

Brandon Christensen Culture ,

Most lambs were born of flesh.

But not me.

I was born with a word.

“Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals. Each according to its kind.” I didn’t know who said it, but I began to live somehow. At first, I was a microscopic cell that grew and divided; my cells formed into tissues, which then developed into organs, and systems emerged afterwards. All these vital parts of mine were sewn up together into a body clothed in white fur, and hooves that made a closing to the ends of my limbs.

[Click here to read the entire story]

Onyinyechi Ndukaire is a writer residing in Lagos, Nigeria. She believes in the power of stories and how it has and will shape the world; that is why she tells them. Her works have been published in Isonomia Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Arts Lounge, and elsewhere. Write: ndukaireonyinyechi@gmail.com.

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Fundraising Drive for an Institutional Home

Brandon Christensen Current Events

Hi all,

After almost fifteen years of herding cats (especially here at NOL), I am officially ready to make things official and run Iso Q as a non-profit’s flagship publication instead of what we’ve currently been doing.

So, dear readers, can you pony up some cash for the creation of the Isonomia Foundation?

“The Twelve Delusions of the Lollards” by Lucy Swan

Brandon Christensen Culture, History , , ,

Beginning in about late fourteenth-century England, a movement of Christians known as the Lollards challenged many of the doctrines of the medieval Church. They raised questions about who possessed the legitimate authority to interpret Scripture, administer sacraments, compel oaths, and govern Christian life. They insisted on the primacy of Scripture over ecclesiastical hierarchy and disputed church dogma on transubstantiation, clerical celibacy, pilgrimages, and prayers for the dead. The movement unsettled the religious, legal, and political structures through which the ecclesiastical authorities exercised rule.

The poem below adopts the voice of an orthodox clerical opponent responding to such challenges.

[Click here to read the whole thing]

Lucy Swan studies history and poetry. Her poetry appears in The Clayjar Review and The Aerie, where she also serves as an editor. Send her mail.

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“Incorrigible Rudeness, The Strategy For Social-Political Impotence” by Paul Poenicke

Brandon Christensen Culture, Current Events , , ,

Isonomia Quarterly readers have likely asked the following question: Why are Hayekian ideas so unpopular? Equality under the law and global federalism—two of Hayek’s most cogent ideals—are consequential from numerous perspectives and justified by many strong arguments. A dozen phrases pass through the mind—”The best arguments persuade,” “The truth will out,” “Survival of the fittest beliefs,” “Truth emerges from the marketplace of ideas”—to accost reality. Unfortunately, society is not a truth table, where the input of truth entails the output of further truths. Truth tables are constructs of logic, and reality is not beholden to the results of formal logic and its apparatuses.

[Click here to read the entire essay]

Paul Poenicke is a trained philosopher, specializing in social epistemology and social-political philosophy. Send mail to him at ppoenicke@gmail.com.

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“Anarchists and Crime” by Katrina Gulliver

Brandon Christensen History , , ,

The anarchist as a figure in crime is distinct. His goals are not financial, and the terrorist acts committed under the heading of anarchism have ranged from assassinations of public figures to bombings of random civilians. He has also slid far enough into history to seem quaint, or vaguely romantic, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century.

[Click here to read the entire essay]

Katrina Gulliver is trained as a historian, and has worked at universities and cultural institutions in Europe, the US, and Australia. You can find her website at katrinagulliver.com.

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Print copies of Isonomia Quarterly’s latest issue (4.1 Spring 2026) are now available

Brandon Christensen Current Events , ,

You can order a copy here.

If you become a paid subscriber to Isonomia Quarterly, you will, of course, get print issues sent to your door automatically…

New Episode of Mutual Exchange Radio with Kevin Carson on the Methodenstreit

Zachary Woodman Liberty

For those who are unaware, I’ve been one of the hosts of the Center for a Stateless Society’s flagship podcast Mutual Exchange Radio for a number of years now. Our latest episode features Kevin Carson discussing the role of theory and history in the debate between Austrian and Historicist economists, as well as touching on the American institutionalist school, the role of interest and credit in mutualist banking (an issue with which I disagree with Carson, as you will see), absentee landlordism and more. The touchstone for our conversation was his 2021 C4SS study on the topic. You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts, or on C4SS’s website.

New issue of Isonomia Quarterly is out now!

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , ,

Enjoy it here…