It’s often been speculated that Paul-Émile de Puydt’s 1860 essay Panarchy might have been influenced by his fellow Belgian Gustave de Molinari’s similar ideas about competitive security services in his 1849 works The Production of Security and Soirées on the Rue Saint-Lazare.
Well, I don’t have new light on that question, exactly, but I have discovered that De Puydt’s essay received a highly favourable review in a journal edited by Molinari. I’ve just translated and posted the review, here.
A nice discussion of fantasy fiction in general and Game of Thrones in particular.
Molinari Society update: the session on Gary’s book will be held in the Yorkshire room.
I will not here discuss the great controversy about small and large farms. [Note: and then he goes on to discuss it. – RTL] I know it has been maintained that a large farm produces more proportionally, than several small farms of the same extent;
because the large proprietor has the command of capital and processes which are not within the reach of the small proprietors; but I am not sure whether it might not be answered, that the petty occupants, in the absence of monied capital, expend on the parcels of which they are the proprietors an amount of activity and personal energy which could not be obtained from a hired labourer; that all labouring thus for themselves, and under the influence of a fruitful selfishness, may, by the force of zeal and industry, succeed in obtaining from the lands as much, if not more, than a single proprietor, compelled to hire the labour of others, could procure … The experience of modern times has shown what a difference in value there is between the work of the free labourer and the slave; but we do not yet know how much the labour of the cultivating proprietor is better than that of the hired labourer.
— Gustave de Beaumont, Ireland: Social, Political, and Religious, vol. 2 (1842)
From Henry V (and don’t miss Bilbo, Batman, and Prince Vultan in the audience):
From Game of Thrones:
March 31st is the deadline to apply to the Institute for Humane Studies’ two intellectual-history “Champions of Liberty” summer seminars for 2013 – Freedom Renewed: Libertarian Visionaries (June 8-14, Chapman University, covering Mill through the present) and Revolutionaries, Reformers, and Radicals: Liberty Emerges (July 27-August 2, Bryn Mawr, covering the School of Salamanca through the 19th-century anarchists; that’s the one I’m speaking at).
I’ve been at quite a few IHS gigs, on both the giving and receiving ends as it were, and they’re a lot of fun. They’re also free of charge to students, including food, lodging, and course materials (though not travel).
I’m also teaching at Mises U. (July 21-27) back to back with my IHS seminar. The application deadline for that is April 8th. (Same funding deal as IHS.) Collect them all!