- Criminal defense attorney Ken White has the most thoughtful take on the recent SCOTUS ruling that pit Clarence Thomas against Antonin Scalia
- Ayn Rand versus evolutionary psychology. Economist Bryan Caplan explains why Ayn Rand was wrong
- Why were American Economics textbooks so Pro-Soviet? A great question from Caplan (again)
- Inequality: Haven’t we had this discussion before? Economist Peter Boettke, a specialist in the history of economic thought, asks the question
- Remembering Why Hayek Mattered. A political scientist from Princeton, Keith Wittington, provides a great example
F.A. Hayek
Is China running out of cash?
China Halts Bank Cash Transfers
“The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, has just ordered commercial banks to halt cash transfers.”
Could we be seeing the start of total economic collapse? The answer, ceteris paribus, is yes and the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) explains why.
To quote Ludwig Von Mises’ explanation of the final act of the ABCT:
“Ludwig von Mises stated that the “crisis” (or “credit crunch“) arrives when the consumers come to reestablish their desired allocation of saving and consumption at prevailing interest rates.[12][“
This means that when consumers finally realize that the money they have invested has actually been malinvested in the economy they then seek to acquire as much of their money as possibly from said investments. Most of which take the form of bank deposits.
The linked article reminds us that this is the numerous such time that China has adopted this policy saying:
“So what’s really going on? This crunch follows similar incidents in June and December of last year. In June, for instance, the central bank used the excuseof a “system upgrade” to allow banks to shut down their ATMs and online banking platforms. As a result, they conserved cash and thereby avoided a nationwide meltdown.”
Other instances, such as this one in England where “[s]ome HSBC customers have been prevented from withdrawing large amounts of cash because they could not provide evidence of why they wanted it,” show that this problem may not be contained to China and may be spreading to the international market.
What does Murray Rothbard say will happen when this “credit crunch” inevitably occurs?
Wasteful projects, as we have said, must either be abandoned or used as best they can be. Inefficient firms, buoyed up by the artificial boom, must be liquidated or have their debts scaled down or be turned over to their creditors. Prices of producers’ goods must fall, particularly in the higher orders of production—this includes capital goods, lands, and wage rates […]
this means a fall in the prices of the higher-order goods relative to prices in the consumer goods industries. Not only prices of particular machines must fall, but also the prices of whole aggregates of capital, e.g., stock market and real estate values. In fact, these values must fall more than the earnings from the assets, through reflecting the general rise in the rate of interest return […]
“Since factors must shift from the higher to the lower orders of production, there is inevitable “frictional” unemployment in a depression, but it need not be greater than unemployment attending any other large shift in production. In practice, unemployment will be aggravated by the numerous bankruptcies, and the large errors revealed, but it still need only be temporary […]
Another common secondary feature of depressions is an increase in the demand for money. This “scramble for liquidity” is the result of several factors: (1) people expect falling prices, due to the depression and deflation, and will therefore hold more money and spend less on goods, awaiting the price fall; (2) borrowers will try to pay off their debts, now being called by banks and by business creditors, by liquidating other assets in exchange for money; (3) the rash of business losses and bankruptcies makes businessmen cautious about investing until the liquidation process is over.
With the supply of money falling, and the demand for money increasing, generally falling prices are a consequent feature of most depressions. A general price fall, however, is caused by the secondary, rather than by the inherent, features of depressions.
So is the massive failure of all economies imminent? Well not necessarily because the government can take some steps to prevent the immediate failure.
“Continually expanding bank credit can keep the borrowers one step ahead of consumer retribution (with the help of successively lower interest rates from the central bank). In the theory, this postpones the “day of reckoning” and defers the collapse of unsustainably inflated asset prices.[12][14] It can also be temporarily put off by price deflation or exogenous events such as the “cheap” or free acquisition of marketable resources by market participants and the banks funding the borrowing (such as the acquisition of land from local governments, or in extreme cases, the acquisition of foreign land through the waging of war).[15]
The “false” monetary boom ends when bank credit expansion finally stops – when no further investments can be found which provide adequate returns for speculative borrowers at prevailing interest rates”
These steps only “kick the can down the road” and delay the inevitable since “the longer the “false” monetary boom goes on, the bigger and more speculative the borrowing, the more wasteful the errors committed and the longer and more severe will be the necessary bankruptcies, foreclosures and depression readjustment.”
We may be seeing the beginning of the next great depression here but only time will tell. One thing is certain though, a massive economic readjustment is coming and the central banks of the world have only been aggravating the problem. When it will hit is anyone’s guess but in this author’s opinion we are either looking at a repeat of the early 30’s or a repeat of the early 40’s and I can only hope we can avoid going through both.
What is entrepreneurship and why should you care?
The word entrepreneurship is thrown around a lot, but rarely defined. As far as I can tell nobody really believes (or is willing to admit they believe) that entrepreneurship is anything less than highly important (“Green child entrepreneurs are our future! Support our troops against breast cancer!”). It’s probably a wise political move to not pin down the idea because it means anyone’s cronies can be considered entrepreneurs. Speaking of which, “crony” is almost the antonym of entrepreneur. Cronyism evokes images of stagnation, inefficiency, “innovations” that make things worse, and opportunities for genuine improvement that are ignored.
So what does entrepreneurship mean? There are two general definitions, and both bear on the question of how to go about having a peaceful, productive, and morally praiseworthy society. The more general of the two is judgment in the face of uncertainty. That is, given that we don’t know what tomorrow will look like, and we certainly don’t know what the world will look like in 10, 25, or 50 years, we have to make wise, forward-looking decisions. We don’t have enough information to simply plug the relevant data into an Excel spreadsheet and get the “correct” action from a formula. In other words, understanding the ubiquity of entrepreneurship means that we still consider The Use of Knowledge in Society to be relevant.
The more specific definition is pursuit of pure economic profit (above “normal returns to capital, labor, etc.”) by pursuing hitherto un- or under-exploited opportunities. Such breaks from the status quo are the creative acts necessary for economic progress. Entrepreneurship is the human face of economic change that provides a micro-level description of what economists might otherwise wave their hands over and call “technology.” This sort of entrepreneurship is an important source of uncertainty about the future. 2014 is so much different from 1964 because of the actions of innovative entrepreneurs out to improve their own lives.
You’ll notice that I haven’t defined entrepreneurship in a way that actually is inimical to cronyism. That’s because not all entrepreneurship is productive. Destructive entrepreneurship is the pursuit of economic profit that makes the entrepreneur better off at the expense of someone else resulting in a net-loss. So we should be concerned not only with allowing individuals the autonomy necessary to be entrepreneurial (rather than merely reacting formulaically to top-down commands), but also with establishing institutions that direct people to help others.
Around the Web
This is the 69th installment of ‘Around the Web’. Giggity!
- guaranteed income vs. open borders; Economist Kevin Grier weighs the options
- How poverty taxes the brain; A sexy-sounding female gives us the low-down
- The origins of Northwest European ‘guilt culture’; Evolutionary anthropologists are so, soooo cute
- The ‘thoughtful libertarian’ subreddit; Finally!
- Is Christmas efficient? Only an economist (Tyler Cowen) could ask such a thing
- God, Hayek and the Conceit of Reason; Concise essay by Jonathan Neumann in Standpoint
- Milton Friedman’s 1997 musings on a common currency in the European Union: The Euro: From monetary policy to political disunity
Ah, se tivessem dado ouvidos às evidências científicas…
Lembra de todo “auê” em torno do Fome Zero? Aquele slogan bem breguinha de que quem tem fome quer furar fila, e tal? Pois é. Aí veio a POF de 2003 e descobriu-se que não havia tanto motivo para a choradeira. Muita gente calou a boca e saiu com o rabo entre as pernas, outras apelaram, etc.
Aí você pega um bom livro para ler, como o Heavy! (HEAVY!: The Surprising Reasons America Is the Land of the Free-And the Home of the Fat, Springer Verlag) do Richard McKenzie, e encontra:
Today, the distribution of the country’s weight problems across income classes has reversed, as excess weight problems are disproportionately concentrated among the poor.
Como está no kindle, não tenho a página. Mas digo uma coisa: as evidências empíricas não são novas. O motivo de não se dar ouvidos às evidências é uma mistura de ignorância intencional (grupos de interesse) e não-intencional. Como sempre, a gente se lembra de como as más idéias também movimentam o mundo.
Evidentemente, não há nada de indigno ou de errado em faturar um hambúrguer de vez em quando. Como nos lembra Matt Ridley, em The Rational Optimist (P.S.):
Fire and cooking in turn then released the brain to grow bigger still by making food more digestible with an even smaller gut – once cooked, starch gelatinises and protein denatures, releasing far more calories for less input of energy. As a result, whereas other primates have guts weighing four times their brains, the human brain weighs more than the human intestine. Cooking enabled hominids to trade gut size for brain size.
Sim, também no Kindle. Bom, Matt Ridley está nos dando uma interessantíssima evidência de que o processo digestivo, hoje glamourizado pela comida barata (obrigado, produtividade elevada! Obrigado, mercados!) e farta que, sim, chega à mesa de muito mais gente do que no passado, pode ter sido uma das causas de nosso progresso.
Parece que teremos muito o que aprender (e comer…moderadamente) até chegarmos a um nível de compreensão mínimo acerca dos efeitos da ingestão de calorias em nossas vidas. Em verdade, em verdade, eu vos digo: nunca chegaremos a uma compreensão completa (Hayek!) e, portanto, muito mais cuidado e humildade deveriam ter nossos “iluminados” reguladores de agências governamentais: eles mesmos não sabem direito o que fazem (tal como nós). Ora, então porque lhes dar tanto poder para decidir sobre nossa dieta? Podemos votar livremente, mas devemos ser limitados no que desejamos de sobremesa? Não, obrigado.
Is there such thing as Conservative Liberalism?
A friend sent me an email expressing confusion at the idea of Conservative Liberalism, which is apt because it combines two frequently misused words in a confusing way. Let me offer my views/definitions of important political terms to shed some light on this. This post will almost certainly raise more questions than it answers so disagree with me in the comments!
Hayek contrasted conservatism with liberalism and socialism, though a restatement would replace socialism with interventionism. My views are roughly in line with Hayek’s on what these terms mean, with an important caveat (below).
Conservatism is a support for the status quo, and is inherently anti-radical. But that status quo is a historical phenomenon and so conservatism isn’t per se pro- or anti-liberalism. So Conservative Liberalism is possible, just not in America today.
Liberalism is almost synonymous with goodness. It’s a big concept and trying to describe it adequately requires a whole library. All forms of liberalism are essentially concerned with freedom (from the latin Liber, i.e. liberty).
Interventionism is a belief that the government can usefully intervene in society and/or the market. Be that outlawing homosexuality or regulating hotels, this view has a distinctly illiberal flavor, though it’s essentially an orthogonal concept.
Hayek describes these categories as though distinct ideal types and with good reason. There are recurrent divisions along these lines that support thinking of politics in three dimensions, and lead to the formation of three groups (libertarians, conservative Republicans, and liberal [though not classically so] Democrats in the U.S., and similar factions elsewhere). However, I think it makes more sense to think of these as dimensions than ideal types. This adds some vagueness and makes it more difficult to put people in boxes. There can be Conservative Liberals (just not following the last few increasingly illiberal decades), and modern liberals can be understood as being descendant from classical liberal. Ideally everyone would be happy with this vagueness and instead of using labels as short-hand we’d discuss these sorts of things in depth.
But alas, it’s not so easy and even three dimensions is too many for most people, so we’ve got Left and Right wings. Us versus them! Good and evil! Which puts libertarians in the awkward position of not quite fitting in with Democrats on the left or Republicans on the right. I think the Nolan Chart is a step in the right direction. It makes Libertarians (top of the chart!) equidistant from left and right, but not really centrist either. It strips out political labels and gets to the principles at hand. And it’s ahistorical so it leaves room for radicalism and conservatism.
But then we’re left with a tricky situation because we’ve just eliminated an important dimension! And that leads to confusion when we discuss left and right because the ideas aren’t quite as simple as just particular bundles of policies, and that’s especially obvious in a two dimensional graph. If someone asks a libertarian if they’re left or right they should respond “freedom top!” and a neo-con should respond “power bottom!” I view Leftism as being an approach that is radical (i.e. anti-status quo) and Rightism as being pro-established interests. But it isn’t as simple as that either because the historical origins of the terms, and every day practice involves self-identification. The Tea Party is definitely in the Right but their views are typically radical (either radically small-government-liberal, or radically socially-conservative). There are right-wingers who are pro-market (a liberal position) and those who are pro-business (a pro-established interest position).
So what’s the solution? Libertarians would probably like to see an accurate taxonomy that accounts for a wide variety of political and moral dimensions, but left/right has adequate for many for so long. I think the Nolan Chart is a good first step to breaking this false dichotomy, but I also think that using terms like classical liberal is a good choice when it invites conversation with people who aren’t familiar with these ideas. And Conservative Liberalism? It’s a paradoxical term that would also invite discussion, but it’s irrelevant since in the current historical context, the status quo is illiberal.
Gun control: Centralized vs. Dispersed
Hayek made the point that the debate of whether to have central planning was not over whether or not there would be planning, but over who would plan for whom. This point has an analog in the debate over gun control. The option is not between reason and chaos, but between centralized (and therefore bureaucratic) control and decentralized control.
Just because you (i.e. your ideals as embodied in the Democratic National Convention) aren’t in control, doesn’t mean that nobody is. A decentralized gun control regime is one where individual gun owners are responsible for securing their weapons and criminals are responsible for crimes they commit. Will mistakes be made? In the imperfect world we live in that’s almost a certainty. Will the results be worse than one with government gun control? That’s an empirical question. Political gun control will raise the cost of getting guns, but it will also raise the relative criminal effectiveness of guns. It will save some lives but will also cost some. There will probably be fewer accidental deaths and suicides, maybe fewer crime-of-passion murders, but likely more “kill the witness” murders. If the penalty for using a gun in a crime is high, then the relative cost of killing a witness is low (for example, adding a life sentence for murder on top of a 30 year sentence for armed robbery is like getting a 30-year off coupon on that life sentence).
With 3D printed guns on the horizon (to say nothing of the “dangerous” lack of regulation of machining tools!) an effective political gun control regime would have to expand to all manner of regulation. This regulation would cost a lot! But, one might object, mere money is not worth as much as the lives that might be saved. But it’s not embossed portraits of dead white men that’s at stake. I don’t think we should let economists play God, but I think there is something to economists’ activity of considering what we might be willing to give up for a life.
Money is a medium of exchange; it’s not the end, just a tool we use to make life easier. The cost of regulation is real human well-being, time, and effort foregone. Taking someone’s money prevents them from spending it on what they otherwise would have. It also discourages them from investing further effort into producing something valued by others. Regulation also takes people’s (irreplaceable!) time; saving someone’s (irreplaceable) life provides some moral justification for this, but the cost must be acknowledged.
If (if!) there is a benefit to political gun control (that is if we judge the lives lost under a decentralized regime as morally superior to those lost under a political regime), then we should still consider the cost. In any case, we should all stop using the term “gun control” when we mean “political gun control.” A problem defined is a problem half solved, and the blanket term “gun control” mis-defines the problem.
Around the Web
- When governments go after witches
- Borders, Ethnicity and Trade [pdf]
- A Lonely Passion. Libertarians in China
- Halloween in Germany: read this with globalization and its critics in mind
- Should Japan take the lead in mediating US-Iranian talks? Props to Obama, by the way
- Another excellent Free Speech blurb from Ken White
- Culture in a Cage
What Ails You, Economy?
The Keynesian is ever mistaking economic activity for economic growth, credit expansion for wealth creation, profligacy for progress. Growth, wealth, progress. He uses his own definitions of each to reinforce his definitions of the others. And they are all fallacious.
When the Austrian tells the Keynesian that the printing and spending of mere pieces of paper cannot lead to more wealth in society, the Keynesian retorts that it is undeniable that credit expansion and stimulus lead to more economic activity. In this he is technically correct. Printing more dollars and handing them out to those who would consume and invest them, does indeed lead to “activity,” even more perhaps than there otherwise would have been.
But our Keynesian assumes, or assumes that his audience will assume, that mere economic activity is growth, is wealth, is progress. Presumably this includes even that activity which our Austrian rightly considers overinvestment (more properly, malinvestment), overconsumption, and/or the proverbial breaking of windows, each of these a common side-effect of the Keynesian witchdoctor’s remedies (often intended to cure ailments caused by earlier interventions, some Keynesian, some not).
If the Keynesian’s definition of economic activity doesn’t (oh, but it does!) include these things then the burden of proof is on him to show that his prescriptions lead to more real growth than would their absence on an unhampered market. And that his incantations lead, on the whole, to economic health rather than disease. A free market is largely unencumbered by the ailments mentioned above so in order to do this it would need to be shown that the sicknesses that do affect it are somehow worse than those caused by intervention.
And to be sure, pure economic freedom isn’t perfect. It has its own share of maladies. But these are all coughs and sneezes by comparison. Cures, if they are needed at all, come from the market itself. The economic meddlers and potion peddlers only serve to make things worse.
We must admit that not even on the most unfettered of markets does all economic activity lead to growth. For human actors err, and the market punishes their errors. How much more is all this the case under a centrally-planned expansionary-monetary/stimulatory-fiscal regime? And how much more severe will be the punishment?
Imperialism or Federalism: The Occupation of South Korea
A recent op-ed in Foreign Policy highlights South Korea’s very successful rent-seeking campaign in regard to US military services:
When it comes to taking charge of coalition forces here on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea has been a little gun shy. South Korea and the United States this week are celebrating the 60-year anniversary of an alliance forged after the Korean War; there were two parades, a big dinner, video retrospectives, and a lot of talk of katchi kapshida (“we stand together”). But after decades of confidence-building joint exercises and billions of dollars in military assistance, it’s time for the South Koreans to step up and assume what’s called “operational control” of all forces stationed here if war should break out. The problem is, the South Koreans aren’t quite ready.
This brings out two interrelated but distinct trains of thought in my mind. First, it destroys the arguments, found on the hard Left, about a brutal US imperialism in the region. Seoul has made a US military presence on its soil a top priority for sixty years now. This has been the case during the autocratic period and it is now the case for the democratic one as well. A state cannot have a brutal presence in another state’s territory if the latter state continues to make the former’s presence a top priority.
Second, this is not to say that the US is not imperialistic. Here is how Merriam-Webster online defines imperialism: “the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.” With this useful definition in mind, South Korea’s rent-seeking necessarily brings up anti-imperial arguments from the center and the Right; namely, that South Korea is taking US taxpayers for a ride (the Cato Institute has done some especially good work on this topic).
So here are the relevant circumstances: the US military is currently on the Korean peninsula, and it is fairly entrenched, and the South Koreans overwhelmingly want it there, and US citizens don’t seem to mind all that much the presence of their military along the 38th parallel. So what exactly is the problem? Why is Foreign Policy, a traditionally interventionist publication, highlighting South Korea’s rent-seeking now? The answer, I think you all know, is government gridlock. Notice first how gridlock is not necessarily a bad thing. It forces Americans to reassess their priorities and to make tough compromises.
Libertarians have long called for Washington to withdraw its troops from South Korea (and correctly so). Among their grievances are the aforementioned rent-seeking tactics of the South Koreans, the unnecessary expenses that accompany such arrangements, and the fact that a US military presence causes unnecessary problems with China and North Korea.
Given the costs and the unnecessary dangers associated with occupation, I am in full agreement with libertarians. However, given the four circumstances mentioned above, I think there is a better way to go about pursuing a more just situation: federate with each other. By federate I do not mean that Seoul should send two senators and X number of representatives. That would be extraordinarily unfair. However, if the 17 provinces in South Korea each sent two senators and X number of representatives, justice would be achieved.
The objections to such an idea are numerous. They include political, cultural and economic angles, and none of them ever hold up to scrutiny. But what exactly is wrong with the status quo? What’s wrong with a complete military withdrawal? My answer to the first question is simply that the status quo is unfair. The South Koreans are ripping the Americans off. My answer to the second question is a bit more complicated.
A complete withdrawal implies that South Korea is not paying its fair share. Indeed, that it is not paying its share at all. A complete withdrawal also implies that foreign occupation creates unnecessary dangers, and it is indeed difficult to imagine a nuclear-armed North Korea without the presence of the US military along the 38th parallel (would Beijing or Tokyo stand for that? Would there be two Koreas? Korea today, without the war, would look like Vietnam).
A withdrawal also implies that the US no longer cares about the South Korean people. Only the hard, fringe Korean Left wants the US out. It’s not the threat of China or North Korea I’m concerned about (only demagogues are concerned about that), but rather the lost opportunity to enhance liberty and equality under the law in both the US and South Korea.
A federation would go a long way toward tackling these problems. South Korean provinces would suddenly find themselves paying their fair share. Two armies would become one (that means soldiers from the province of Jeollanam would be fighting in Afghanistan and not just patrolling the 38th parallel). The propaganda about American imperialism coming from the socialist paradise of North Korea would be rendered obsolete. A new peace – based on consent and equality – would begin to arise. My inspiration for these thoughts comes from a segment of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (pgs 681-682; bottom of 779-794 in the Bantam paperback edition), musings from Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (223-236 in the definitive, paperback edition) and Mises’s fascinating argument in Liberalism (105-154 of the paperback edition from FEE; here is a pdf of the book from mises.org). I’d even go so far as to claim that it is a more libertarian position than the calls to withdraw from the region. At any rate, it would certainly address the problem of rent-seeking that the US now finds itself facing (which in turn proves that the libertarians were correct all along).
Around the Web
I apologize for the dearth of posts lately. I have been reading a lot of books the old-fashioned way, chasing girls down so that I can smell their hair and generally just enjoying life post-graduation.
- Will Wilkinson blogs about the drug war’s inherent racism at Democracy in America.
- Rebecca Liao writes about Democracy in China for Dissent.
- Randy Barnett on the future of federalism after the “gay marriage” SCOTUS decision.
- Uganda versus South Korea. An interesting take on development by Andrew Mwenda.
- The Economist has a great piece on the violence in Turkey.
- Fascinating ‘comments’ thread on Hayek and Pinochet. I am going to dedicate a long piece to this thread shortly. American Leftists are just classical liberals who have come to think of themselves as superior to their neighbors. Leftists in Europe and Latin America are murderous.
Why are there no “Libertarian Countries”?
So asks Michael Lind in Salon yesterday.
My answer to the question would be:
A libertarian state (he says “country”) is a contradiction in terms. Duh! Some states/countries are certainly more libertarian than others, and the Salon piece even acknowledges that, but the state itself is the reason there are no pure “libertarian countries”. It need not have anything to do with anarchism as even limited government advocates view the state as a necessary evil, and its nature as eventually and inevitably corruptive of all that exists within its prerogatives.
If Mr. Lind simply wants an example of a geographic area that is entirely libertarian, sans state, he would first need to acknowledge that no such place can exist within or as part of a state. But since every country in the world is a state, there are no such places. Even if there were, they wouldn’t count according to Mr. Lind, because they would not fit his definition of country. Notice how he discounts several contestants, having already failed to say what he thinks a libertarian country would look like: Continue reading
Reading Hayek in Beijing
That’s the subject of a fascinating account of life in China through the eyes of a dissident in this last week’s Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:
Put another way, the conventional notion that the modern Chinese system combines political authoritarianism with economic liberalism is mistaken: A more accurate description of the recipe is dictatorship and cronyism, with the results showing up in rampant corruption, environmental degradation and wide inequalities between the politically well-connected and everyone else. “There are two major forms of hatred” in China today, Mr. Yang explains. “Hatred toward the rich; hatred toward the powerful, the officials.” As often as not they are one and the same.
There is more, too: Continue reading
Has Foreign Affairs Been Reading NOL?
Hello all, I signed up for a pretty challenging final quarter here at school, so my postings will probably be scarce for the next two or three months. It seems Foreign Affairs, one of the more sober foreign policy journals out there, is finally starting to read us here at the consortium. I’ll get to that in a minute but first: editorial duties call!
- Be sure to read Dr. Delacroix’s Bush-worshiping piece for an example of how obstinate ignorance works. The very man who mocks smart, well-educated people for their acceptance of scientific consensus on global warming as ‘cultists‘ seems to believe that “there were very good reasons for any reasonable person to be misled about the existence of [WMDs] in Iraq.” You have to admit, the man has a lot of brass!
- I still have to get to co-blogger Andrew Roth’s recent comment chastising conservatives and libertarians for failing to recognize the many nuances associated with Bismark’s statecraft and Roosevelt’s New Deal.
- We’ve got a couple new writers who will be blogging here at the consortium. One is an economics major at UC Merced and the other is a Guatemalan national doing graduate studies in Denmark, so stay tuned!
Political scientists Roland Benedikter and Lucas Kaelin have a fascinating piece in Foreign Affairs focusing on the one bright spot in Europe these days: Switzerland. Libertarians who have read the political and legal works of Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and James Buchanan will recognize the gist of the arguments right away. To summarize: small, democratic states are the best form of government available to man, given our vast shortcomings, and these small states are, in turn, much better off operating within vast free trade zones that do not hinder the small-scale democracy at work in these states. From the piece: Continue reading
Notes On Liberty 