Author: Brandon Christensen

African Political Structures: A Debate

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I just hooked a big fish on the end of my line when I tweeted about my support for secession of Azawad to Dr. George Ayittey, an economist at American University and one of Africa’s leading lights of classical liberalism.  I have a talent for ribbing people in just the right place at just the right time, and the following response I got from Dr. Ayittey confirms my magnificent talent (some may disagree with the label ‘talent’, but I digress).

In response to my support for Azawad, Dr. Ayittey tweeted the following: Continue reading →

From the Comments: A Note on the Upcoming French Elections

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, Economics , , , , , ,

Jacques Delacroix has belatedly responded (he’s retired!) to an inquiry about the upcoming French elections. Happening History posed the following question to Dr. Delacroix:

I found your post very interesting. One thing I found particularly interesting was your remarks on the French left. Since the presidential election is coming up soon, what do you think would happen to how the financial mess in Europe is being handled if the Socialist candidate were elected considering the major role France plays? How likely do you think it is that Hollande could win?

Dr J’s response deserves to be read by all: Continue reading →

Chicago, Vienna and San Francisco

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Co-editor Fred Foldvary has a great essay up on three schools of economic thought that deserves to be read by all.  An excerpt:

The Vienna school emphasizes the dynamics of the economy, while the Chicago method is to apply self-interest and economizing in an equilibrium analysis.  The San Francisco school uses both equilibrium and dynamics.  The dynamic approach of change over time is used to show the advance of rent and lowering of wages as the margin of production moves to less productive land and as land speculation moves the margin out even further.  Equilibrium shows that since market rent is based on the fixed supply of land and the demand to rent space, the tax on land not affecting the rent.

The San Francisco school agrees with the Vienna school that the spontaneous order of the free market best allocates goods to human desires.  But the San Francisco school points out that if the ground rent is not tapped for public revenue, when taxes on other things finance civic works, then there is in effect a subsidy to land owners, which distorts the market.

The San Francisco school has a theory of the business cycle based on land values, which rise during a boom, when speculation carries land prices so high that investment gets choked off, resulting in a recession.  But San Francisco has lacked a consensus on the role of central banking and money.

Check out the rest here.

I tend to pay attention whenever Dr. Foldvary writes, because he is the guy who wrote a book in 2007 accurately predicting the economic collapse of 2008.  You can access the book for free here.

A Few Good Debates

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I have often thought that debating other people is just as good (if not better) for learning about other how other people think (and imagine things) as reading a book on a subject.  In this spirit, I thought it’d be cool to point out some of the great debates I’ve had a pleasure of being a part of either though participation or simply as an observer.

Cato Unbound is by far the best place to go if you want to get a good, scholarly, but still colloquial, debate on a topic.  This month’s lead essay is on ‘Bleeding Heart Libertarianism’ and features responses from a number of prominent academics.  I highly recommend taking some time to read through the whole symposium.

Over at the blog Coordination Problem, economist Steve Horwitz takes a grad student (Daniel Kuehn) out for a beating in the proverbial woodshed in the ‘comments’ section.

Again in the ‘comments’ section, I take Jacques Delacroix to school on matters of foreign policy and the law.

And at MarginalRevolution, co-bloggers Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok go at it on banking institutions.  Here is Part 1 (by TC), Part 2 (AT), Part 3 (TC), and Part 4 (AT).

All of these are tough reads with lots of top scholars debating big ideas (save for me, though Jacques is a world-renowned scholar on international trade and development), so you might want to come back to this post and click around a little bit at a time.  All of the debates are highly, highly recommended.

Oh, and the Mises Institute has their new blog up and running (it’s very good): The Circle Bastiat

Native American Sovereignty

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I have been a proponent of abolishing, outright, the Bureau of Indian Affairs for a long time. In its place, I would either grant the Indian tribes full-fledged sovereignty with reparations for stolen property, or would grant the reservations statehood into the union of the United States federal republic.

If you’ll notice, this proposal goes hand-in-hand with my other writings on decentralizing political power in other various parts of the world, and I think that the issue of sovereignty for Native Americans goes along nicely with this theme.  Tyler Cowen recently directed me to a piece in the Economist that writes about just this topic, so I am not nearly as idealistic and young as some of you might think.

I think this decentralized process is happening for a reason, and that the reason is overwhelmingly good: the world’s markets are becoming increasingly integrated, and as a result, political power is becoming increasingly irrelevant except on a largely local or regional scale.

If we want to avoid the mistakes of the past, including slavery and horrific, large-scale wars, then we would do well to realize and affirm that decentralized governance and integrated markets are extremely beneficial to mankind. In affirming this, we would likewise do well to recognize that when people want more autonomy in governance we should grant it to them, especially in cases where post-colonial states exist. States themselves are largely illegitimate, and the post-colonial ones are the most guilty of this crime. There is no reason to pretend that we have to respect the sovereignty of post-colonial states ruled by dictators, and every reason to respect the wishes of large swathes of the people in these post-colonial states for more political autonomy. Continue reading →

Mali: Let It Collapse, Duh! Part 2

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I just came across an article in the New York Times via Bill Easterly, and it is very discouraging. The article is, of course, about the aspirations of Azawad, the breakaway region of Mali that just declared its independence. The article outlines the slim-to-none chances Azawad has of breaking free from the shackles of colonial legacy and African despotism:

“[…] there is little likelihood that anyone will defeat the Tuaregs on the battlefield anytime soon.

Still, they face slim odds of establishing a nation. Just ask Ahmed Abdi Habsade, a government minister in Africa’s other unrecognized state, Somaliland. ‘We have many problems,’ Mr. Habsade said in a telephone interview from Somaliland’s capital, Hargeysa. ‘The country cannot get donations from the U.N. or other governments. We are not having a budget to develop our country.’

Somaliland, which sits in the northwestern corner of Somalia, has been a de-facto independent nation for the better part of two decades, and an oasis of calm in the chaos that has swept up Somalia. Its claims to independence date from the colonial era, when it was a British protectorate while Somalia was controlled by Italy. The two states merged after independence, but the Somalilanders had almost immediate regrets, and have been trying to break free ever since.

Somaliland has had successes, including holding peaceful elections, yet it has struggled without an international stamp of Continue reading →

Mali: Let It Collapse, Duh!

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Mali is a landlocked state created by imperialist France in the late 19th century. Due to the Western intervention in Libya, in which NATO bombed the brutal dictator Moammar Ghaddafi out of power, a large wave of unrest has reached the Saharan states of Mali, Chad, and Niger.

Recently, a coup overthrew the democratically elected head of the Malian state, and an insurgency in the north just declared its independence from Bamako. This is a good thing, and I will get to why this event is a good thing, but first I want to lament the way in which the West is handling this secession. The West seems intent on keeping its creation alive and propped up, regardless of the incessant pulls away from these structures that post-colonial states often face. I have criticized this aspect of Western foreign policy before, in regards to Somalia, Nigeria, and Libya, but it appears that the West is much more open to the idea of its creations falling apart than it used to be. Indeed, the Daily Star, a Lebanese daily newspaper, reports: Continue reading →

The Arab-Israeli Mess

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I am currently studying the Arab-Israeli conflict under the tutelage of this professor, a world-renowned scholar on the subject.  We are reading a very good text, A History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Bickerton and Klausner, and I am just curious as to what readers have to say on this subject.  I am all in favor of a two state solution myself, but am open to other options if the case is well presented.

What are your thoughts on this conflict?

Ron Paul Visits UCLA: the Recap

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics

It was great.  We had the largest crowd yet for a Ron Paul rally.  The applause and the loudness made Ron Paul’s wife and granddaughter, who were sitting just off to the side of Ron Paul, giggle a lot.  Los Angeles is wild!

He kept it short and simple.  He talked about the decline of the dollar, the need for reform in the area of currency, and the threat to our economic freedom that the Federal Reserve poses.

He stuck it to both parties when it came to civil liberties, and excoriated the PATRIOT Act and NDAA.  He bashed on the TSA and explained to the crowd of mostly college students the dire necessity of legalizing drugs.  He explained that pharmaceutical drugs are much more dangerous than marijuana, and that they get subsidies from the federal government and are behind prohibition.

He denounced the military-industrial complex.  He talked about the need to bring our troops home from around the world.  From Japan.  From South Korea.  From Germany.  From Uganda.  And from the Middle East.  He talked about engaging the world through free trade and the need to treat other nations as we would like to be treated.  Unlike South Carolina, Los Angeles went wild with applause for his calm argument in favor of a rational and humble foreign policy.

He talked about the freedom to choose, the importance of tolerance, and about the need to abolish – outright – the 16th Amendment.

While waiting around for Ron Paul to speak, the crowd did the wave for a while, and chanted on and off again ‘President Paul’, ‘Ron Paul’, and of course ‘End the Fed’.  While I am loosely associated with the libertarian groups on campus (I have to work if I am not studying; I am paying my own way through college), it was great to see their hard work pay off.  These guys spent months working to get enough signatures from around LA County to bring Ron Paul to UCLA.

It was a night to remember, that’s for sure.  I can’t believe the Republican Party had repudiated this man (I can totally believe that an intellectually bankrupt Left could do such a thing, though).  The times are a’changin’ though, and change is in the air.  The younger generation of Americans are fiscally conservative and socially liberal, and this is the libertarian fountain of progress.

Best of all, hearing Ron Paul speak replenished my thirst for individual liberty and justice for all.

Ron Paul to Visit UCLA

Brandon Christensen Liberty

To all you Angelinos, Ron Paul will be in Westwood tonight at 8:30 pm.

Here is the link to free registration.  Hope to see you all there!

Links From Around the Web

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Co-editor Fred Foldvary on the destruction of the Libertarian Party.

Newest member of the consortium, Warren Gibson, writes in the Freeman about GDP.

Ninos Malek on associating in peace.

Jacques Delacroix questions Ron Paul’s credibility.

And writing over in the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf celebrates the failed boycott attempts of Rush Limbaugh’s show.

I just started school today, so if you don’t hear from me for a while, you now know why.  Have a great spring!

Two More Days!

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Two more days to sign up for the Independent Institute’s summer seminar scholarship offer.

I first became interested in libertarianism during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Ron Paul gained national prominence for his tangle with Rudy Giuliani on foreign policy.  In the summer of 2009, just after the presidential primaries wrapped up, I embarked on a nationwide journey to learn more about the concept of liberty.

My first stop was the Independent Institute’s summer seminar, an from that experience I not only learned a lot about how markets work (I just spent the afternoon going over my notes from the seminar), but I was also able to make some great connections as well.  Indeed, the co-editor of this blog, Fred Foldvary, was a lecturer at the seminar, and Brian Gothberg, who is incredibly good at teaching basic economic subjects, are just some of the fantastic people that I have been able to count over the past three years for intellectual support.

If you want to spend a week in one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most beautiful locales, learning about liberty, history, civil society, and the market process, then I highly suggest checking out their seminar.  It is absolutely fantastic.

Some Great Links From Around the Web

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A fascinating blog post on Indian domestic politics and foreign policy by a Ph.D. student living in New Delhi and studying at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Alex Warren, a journalist with extensive experience in the Middle East, writes about Libya’s decentralization.

“The Current Models Have Nothing to Say.” That is economist Robert Higgs’s analysis of modern, orthodox economics.

Might regionalism help solve Central America’s woes?  Be sure to check out the rest of the blog, by Seth Kaplan, too.

Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic has a penetrating look at the logic of a drug warrior (h/t Brian Aitken)

Co-editor Fred Foldvary, writing in the Progress Report, explains that value is subjective.  This is an important concept when it comes to understanding economics.

From the Comments: A Note on Property Rights

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A couple of very thoughtful comments have been posted in regards to property rights over the past couple of weeks, and I want to single them out for their thought-provoking content.  JuanBP writes:

Libertarian socialists (no, my dear American friends, that is not an oxymoron) believe in freedom of speech, association,religion and all other liberties cherished by Libertarians. Where we differ profoundly is in our understanding of what constitutes economic liberty – for we tend to consider that property, the very foundation of capitalism, is theft.

And from Benjamin David Steele:

There is one general difference I see between the left and the right which also would refer to the general difference between left-libertarians and right-libertarians. Those on the left tend to see human rights as prior to property rights. And those on the right tend to see property rights as prior to human rights. It is a difference of emphasis, but a very big difference in terms of practical application. As a left-winger with libertarian tendencies, I see no evidence that defending property rights inevitably leads to defending human rights.

Both of these comments provide great insights into one of the many myths espoused in political discourse throughout the world: that property rights are somehow different from any other human right. Continue reading →

Some Musings on China: Why We Need Not Fear Beijing

Brandon Christensen History, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The recent ouster of Bo Xilai from the Communist Party can provide an interesting glimpse into the political mechanisms of the Chinese state. The fact that Mr. Bo was dismissed for “corruption” charges means that he was probably doing something right, or that he was too sloppy with his privileges and embarrassed the wrong people. We all know that socialism, in all its forms, leads to benefits for the few at the expense of the many (remember the bailouts of Western financial institutions?), but Mr. Bo’s ouster deserves a closer look, because he was a fairly prominent politician, and was actually slated as a possible successor to Hu Jintao, the Communist party’s current boss.

What I want to focus on is the fact that Mr. Bo was ousted at all. This move means that Beijing is becoming increasingly responsive to the demands of its citizens. Indeed, as China continues to liberalize its markets, democratic initiatives, whether real or appeasing, will continue to bubble up throughout the fascist state. This is because democracy is the natural political order that arises out of market-based institutions (private property, international trade, etc.). The world will have to be careful with China’s democratic transition though. Democracy is not a good thing in itself, especially democracy that is based upon an allegiance to a state. I am thinking of France in the 19th century and Germany in the 20th, although the democracies that sprung up during the post-colonial revolutions can also be good examples.

The main ideas behind the post-colonial revolutions were state sovereignty and democracy – not liberty – and the results, I think, speak for themselves. Continue reading →