Co-editor Fred Foldvary points out that slavery is alive and well today.
Historian Michael Adamson compares the debacle in Iraq to South Vietnam rather than Germany or Japan.
Ninos Malek explains how property rights are the key to environmental conservation efforts.
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel takes on anthropologist David Graeber.
Don’t criticize Obama for being too rational about Israel by the Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf
Obama’s Adventures in Africa by Gene Healy of the Cato Institute
The Folly of Nation Building by Dr. Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University
The Bell Curve of Despotism by loyal reader Hank
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Virginia Postrel has a provocative post on How Elites Built America’s Economic Wall up at Bloomberg (ht Wilson Mixon). The gist of the post is summed up as follows:
Housing prices have always been steeper in high-income places, but the difference is much greater than it used to be […] This segregation has social and political consequences, as it shapes perceptions — and misperceptions — of one’s fellow citizens and “normal” American life. It also has direct and indirect economic effects. “It’s a definite productivity loss,” Shoag says. “If there weren’t restrictions and you could build everywhere, it would be productive for people to move. You do make more as a waiter in LA than you do in Ohio. Preventing people from having that opportunity to move to these high-income places, making it so expensive to live there, is a loss.” That’s true not only for less-educated workers but for lower earners of all sorts, including the artists and writers who traditionally made places like New York, Los Angeles and Santa Fe cultural centers.
This excerpt gets a high place for my Obvious Statement of the Year Award, but are elites listening? Government regulations hurt workers and drive out competition. This is a given, but I have some questions I thought readers could help me answer.
My questions are both broad and messy: Continue reading
Savage Continent. European women and their Nazi boyfriends.
A Family-Plus Outing. Islam at the Beach: Santa Cruz edition.
As I keep saying, this election is Romney’s to lose.
Sorry ’bout the short posts from me lately. I hope everybody is enjoying their summer!
Lots of great stuff I’ve been meaning to link to lately.
A historian from Hillsdale College, Paul Moreno, has a piece in the WSJ about Congress’s power to tax.
Some sexy chick (also from the WSJ) writes about Obama’s Imperial Presidency. Again, this is in the Wall Street Journal.
A quick heads up on pieces in the Wall Street Journal. Usually, when you click on the link it says access is restricted, but if you copy and paste the title of the piece into a Google search bar then you will be able to access the entire article. Cool, huh?
Obama’s Scramble for Africa. From AntiWar.com.
An economist at Cal State Northridge has a great piece on damn lies and statistics. It’s also about the Obama administration. (h/t Steve Horwitz).
Bernard K. Gordon writes in Foreign Affairs about the necessity of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
And in a prophetic piece (ie it was written in 1991-92) by former Secretary of State James Baker, this very good lawyer sizes up the situation in Asia. Also from Foreign Affairs.
Some sense is finally being made on foreign policy in the Wall Street Journal (h/t Jacques)
Jury nullification in New Hampshire!?! Please buh-lieve it!
When Left links up with Right
Will Wilkinson (of the Economist) and Nick Gillespie (of Reason) take turns ganging up on a recent hit piece of libertarianism in the New York Times. Libertarianism, if you will remember, is the best of both the Left and the Right (with none of the nastiness).
And on Leftist-but-realist (a rarity I assure you!) Stephen Walt’s blog over at Foreign Policy, a Cato Institute foreign policy wonk gets his due.
…was Ron Paul’s hearing on fractional reserve banking. Between the health insurance ruling and AG Holder’s scandal this excellent use of congressional air time has gone largely unnoticed. Congressman Paul brought three well-known economists to testify and I have linked to all three of their testimonies below (I haven’t read all of them yet).
If you manage to finish them soon, feel free to post what you got from them in the comments section.
There is a lot of great stuff out there on the recent ruling. Here are a few I found interesting:
I think I’m done blogging about this whole mess…phlegh!
That’s the title of this article (pdf) in the Political and Legal Anthropology Review. From the abstract:
At the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, an Indian delegate proposed a new research base located within an environmental protection area, because it is where India and Antarctica were connected on the 125-million-year-old continent of Gondwana. How did this claim come to be successful for the Indian Antarctic Program? In the production of documents within international governing bodies, policy makers enroll allies, emphasizing particular aspects of their plans to members of diverse epistemic communities. Instead of trying to make nationally oriented ideas work through uniform procedural rules, international policy makers reshape the contours of acceptable policy-making procedure and the political possibilities of international governance.
The whole thing is interesting, especially if you have a weird obsession with Antarctica like I do! Possibly gated.
Be back to blogging soon. Hope these tide you over.
Speaking of tides, co-editor Fred Foldvary on regulations and swimming pools.
NAFTA has reduced income inequality in Mexico. Just think of what could be created if we continued to liberalize our relations with our neighbors (especially our labor markets).
Hypocrisy in the Democratic Party. See if you can spot it!
The myth of socialist Sweden. Libertarians have been saying this for years, and yet…
May Day: The Conspiracy of Silence Around the Romance of Evil. A nice debunking of the persistent lure of Communism.
Hey everybody,
Co-editor Fred Foldvary is retiring from Santa Clara University and will be giving a farewell lecture on June 6th. The details:
Dear CSI personae,
Fred Foldvary, CSI Director, will retire from SCU on June 2012.
His farewell CSI public lecture will be held
on June 6, 7-8:30 PM, Lucas Hall 126 the Forbes Family Conference Center.
Foldvary’s lecture will be on the question:
“What gives you the right to exist?”
If you had to prove it on the penalty of death,
how would you answer?
See you there,
Fred Foldvary
ffoldvary@scu.edu
We hope everybody who is in the Silicon Valley at the allotted time can attend. Here is CSI’s website. Here is a partial list of Dr. Foldvary’s academic publications over the years (hopefully they are ungated). Here are his writings in the Freeman. Here are his writings in the Progess Report.
Congratulations Dr. Foldvary, you finished the rat race in one piece!
Hey all,
I am in the midst of midterms, but I thought I’d direct you to our blogger’s most recent charges against Congressman Ron Paul: he is a “truther”!
I don’t have much to say on the topic, because Delacroix has been known to exaggerate when it comes to Ron Paul, but I thought I’d give his views a shake. If any of our readers are “truthers”, by the way, you should probably get your head checked. If you think have a good case for an inside job, though, be sure to lay it out here on this humble blog. We like controversy and discussion!
Co-editor Fred Foldvary on the Buffet Misrule.
Mona Eltahaway, an Egyptian-American columnist who was detained and sexually assaulted by Egyptian security forces during the uprisings, writes about Why They Hate Us.
In the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf explains how student debt forgiveness is just another subsidy to the rich.
Will Wilkinson, writing in the Economist, on how Fair is Fair.
Notes On Liberty 