More juvenilia: some unfinished stories from the 1980s.
Archive | Uncategorized
To Serve and Protect
Crispin Sartwell writes:
perhaps it seems obvious that it is in the interests of poor people to have an extremely powerful and pervasive state; perhaps it seems obvious that it is in the interests of rich people to have a tiny powerless state. however, looking at the thing squarely, this is the opposite of obvious. it seems obvious because people keep repeating it or always conceive the terrain this way. but it’s just wackily false with regard to reality. who needs the state more: you know, robert rubin or rodney king?
Read the celý piroh. (CHT Charles.)
Where Minarchists Fear to Tread, Part 2
As previously mentioned, the Society of Political Economy met in 1849 to critique Molinaris market anarchist ideas. A month later, one of the participants in that discussion, free-banking theorist Charles Coquelin, developed his objections further in a book review of Molinaris Soirées on the Rue Saint-Lazare for the Journal des Économistes. I have now translated and posted Coquelins review also.
These two pieces are especially important as the first critiques ever published (AFAIK) of the idea that the legitimate functions of government could and should be turned over to market mechanisms.
Why Nuclear War Can Never Happen in the Marvel Universe
Because the result of nuking an enemy country would be to give the (now somewhat pissed-off) enemy population superpowers.
In fact, its a mystery why Japan didnt win World War II in that universe.
Where Minarchists Fear to Tread
In 1849, the members of the Society of Political Economy the chief organisation for classical liberalism in France at the time met to discuss Molinaris proposal for the competitive provision of security. The meeting included some of the foremost liberal thinkers of the day, such as Bastiat, Dunoyer, Coquelin, Wolowski, and Horace Say (son of J.-B.). Without exception they agreed that Molinaris ideas were unworkable, offering much the same objections to market anarchism as those that are prevalent today. (Although, oddly, nobody raised the objection that would later lead Molinari himself to moderate his position, namely the problem of so-called public goods.) Even Dunoyer, who in his earlier work had come close to Molinaris position, now held that it was best to leave coercive force where civilisation has placed it in the State.
As Rothbard notes, this is an odd claim coming from one of the great founders of the conquest theory of the State. Dunoyers suggestion that democratic elections provide all the competition thats needed in the market for security also sits oddly with his earlier interest-group analysis of electoral politics.
A summary of this meeting was published in a subsequent issue of the Societys organ, the Journal des Économistes. I have now translated and posted this summary, which bears the title Question of the Limits of State Action and Individual Action Discussed at the Society of Political Economy.
Pineapples From Space
More juvenilia: The Elemen Transaction and Ill-Starred Romance (two odd little things, not stories exactly both age 12).