Lost Republic
"The enemy of our freedom . . . faces us now from beneath the eagle-perched domes of our capitals and from behind the alphabetical splatters on the doors of welfare and other bureaus. . . . His artillery is a debased and respectless currency which has emasculated the initiative for independence by robbing initiative of the only mutual scale it knew to measure independence by."
~ William Faulkner

Archive for the 'Austrian School / Libertarian Theory' Category

Stefan Molyneux: Libertarianism is a new thing

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on May 9th, 2012

I love the beginning of this video.

Stefan Molyneux on being a libertarian, against all odds

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory, Dictatorship on April 28th, 2012

“Capitalism” vs. the Free Market

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory, Hidden History, Money/Economy/Taxes on April 22nd, 2012

This is a really interesting lecture because it questions some libertarian sacred cows. It doesn’t disrupt libertarian theory, but it shows some biases generally accepted by libertarians.

For example, it acknowledges the violence behind capital ownership, and points to figures who used “socialist” to mean free market, and “capitalist” to mean statist.

I think the case for the modern use of the word stands, however, and not only because of Mises and Rand, whom Sheldon Richman acknowledges in his talk. But also because all the governments in history which exerted the most control called themselves “socialist” and condemned “capitalism” in the free market sense of the word.

MIT economists “felt like [he] knew less” after reading 21 economic books about crisis

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory, Money/Economy/Taxes on February 23rd, 2012

Too bad Tom Wood’s Meltdown wasn’t on the list, nor was any Austrian explanation.

open quoteA while back, the MIT economist Andrew Lo set out to review a couple books about the financial crisis. Those books led to a couple more books, which led — you see where this is going — to 17 more books.

Now, Lo is about to publish “Reading About The Financial Crisis: A 21-Book Review” (PDF).

Reading 21 books about the financial crisis does not sound, on its face, like a fun experience. After you talk to Lo, it sounds even worse.

“After each book, I felt like I knew less,” he told me. “For an academic, that’s a pretty frustrating feeling.”

Lo read widely. Idea books by economists, newsy books by journalists. An 800-year history of financial crises. (The full list is on pp. 4-5 of the review.)close quote (Read more)

Historian of Decline?

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on November 14th, 2011

open quoteThe memoirs of the indefatigable economist Ludwig von Mises, written from his exile in Geneva in 1940, contain this moving, even tragic, passage:

“Occasionally I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and show the way for policy. Constantly I have been looking for evidence of a change in ideology. But…I have come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.”

Reading the whole of Mises’s works, it is clear what he means by decline: the deliberate wrecking of civilization itself, through the rise of the total state. close quote (Read more from mises.org)

On Rothbardian Theory of Taxes

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory, Hidden History, Money/Economy/Taxes, Size of Government on November 2nd, 2011

Privately produced security and justice, in three simple lessons

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on October 27th, 2011

And for a philosophical criticism of publicly produced security and justice, I present, Hans Hermann Hoppe:

Why the State Demands Control of Money

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory, Sound Money on October 21st, 2011

A very well-written, straight forward explanation here, by Hans Hermann Hoppe. He covers many important libertarian ideas.

Nobel Prize in Economics — Here We Go Again

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on October 20th, 2011

open quoteThis year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics goes to two Americans, Thomas Sargent (NYU) and Christopher Sims (Princeton). Officially the award is for “their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy.”

. . . . it’s a bit odd for the economics profession right now to be celebrating two scientists for their work in helping policymakers steer the macroeconomy. It would be a bit like awarding Jonas Salk a Nobel Prize in the midst of history’s second-worst polio epidemic.

. . . .

Given that you wanted to approach macroeconomics in the way the mainstream has done it over the past few decades, then yes Sargent and Sims made seminal contributions and should be congratulated for their important work. For example, there is a poll for visitors at the official site, asking, “Did you know that Sargent and Sims’s work is used by policymakers worldwide?”

Yet hold on a second. We ironically seem to be in the midst of one of the causation-correlation traps that I just explained above. Just about everyone is celebrating the work of Sargent and Sims, in effect saying, “Thank goodness you gave policymakers such guidance, especially when they need it now in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s! We can only imagine how awful the world economy would be today, were it not for your seminal papers.”
Aspects of the Pathology of Money

$29.00 $25.00

Yet things might well be just the opposite. The “data” is just as consistent with the opposite conclusion, namely that Sargent and Sims steered the macroeconomics profession along a trajectory that led policymakers to do things that blew up the global financial system, such that we are currently worried about the collapse of an entire continent and its currency. close quote (Read more)

See also:

How to silence a Nobel Prize winning economist: Ask him about the economy.

Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis | Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on October 12th, 2011

This essay was the first thing of Hoppe’s I ever read. It blew my mind. It discusses the common ground between Marxism and Austrians and how the Marxists depart down the road to serfdom by misidentifying the exploiters.

Interesting to note that Hoppe began as a Marxist. I think the essay demonstrates his philosophical rigor.

The Trouble With Democracy: Maslow Meets Hoppe | Douglas E. French

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on October 11th, 2011

Mises Explodes Marxism

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on October 11th, 2011

Why Mises and not Hayek — by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on September 26th, 2011

The Revolt against Rationalism

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on September 21st, 2011

open quoteThe most remarkable fact in the history of our age is the revolt against rationalism, economics, and utilitarian social philosophy; it is at the same time a revolt against freedom, democracy, and representative government. It is usual to distinguish within this movement a left wing and a right wing. The distinction is spurious. The proof is that it is impossible to classify in either of these groups the great leaders of the movement.

Was Hegel a man of the Left or of the Right? Both the left-wing and the right-wing Hegelians were undoubtedly correct in referring to Hegel as their master. Was George Sorel a Leftist or a Rightist? Both Lenin and Mussolini were his intellectual disciples. Bismarck is commonly regarded as a reactionary. But his social-security scheme is the acme of present-day progressivism. If Ferdinand Lassalle had not been the son of Jewish parents, the Nazis would call him the first German labor leader and the founder of the German socialist party, one of their greatest men. From the point of view of true liberalism, all the supporters of the conflict doctrine form one homogeneous party.

The main weapon applied by both the right- and the left-wing antiliberals is calling their adversaries names. Rationalism is called superficial and unhistoric. Utilitarianism is branded as a mean system of stockjobber ethics. In the non–Anglo-Saxon countries it is, besides, qualified as a product of British “peddler mentality” and of American “dollar philosophy.” Economics is scorned as “orthodox,” “reactionary,” “economic royalism,” and “Wall Street ideology.”

It is a sad fact that most of our contemporaries are not familiar with economics. All the great issues of present-day political controversies are economic. Even if we were to leave out of account the fundamental problem of capitalism and socialism, we must realize that the topics daily discussed on the political scene can be understood only by means of economic reasoning. But people, even the civic leaders, politicians, and editors, shun any serious occupation with economic studies. They are proud of their ignorance. They are afraid that a familiarity with economics might interfere with the naïve self-confidence and complacency with which they repeat slogans picked up by the way.close quote Read more from mises.org

Hoppe on Knowledge

Posted in Austrian School / Libertarian Theory on August 31st, 2011

These two lectures speak to a very subtle, but very important topic underlying economics.

There’s a struggle between empiricists who insist there is no knowledge without experiment, and rationalists who believe in the triumph of reason. When the former, the empiricists reign, economics gets treated like just an opinion true only until it can be refuted, with all theories (including socialism) being valid until experiments are conducted.

The second of these two lectures by Hans Hermann Hoppe is more accessible than the first.

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