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Days of War, Knights of Love

By on September 4, 2007 7

Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism [cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Two nifty recent releases from the Mises Institute:

First there’s Guido Hülsmann’s massive 1143-page Ludwig von Mises biography Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism. (Or the first of their return, as Francisco said of Hugh Akston.) It looks fascinating!

For a very funny video clip of Guido discussing the book and reading some passages from it, click here. And you can read the preface here.

Then there’s the new two-volume Bastiat Collection.

For a video clip of Mark Thornton being interviewed by Jeff Tucker on the Bastiat book, click here.

The Bastiat Collection Unfortunately, this new collection does not completely supersede the older three-volume FEE collection; each has some material the other lacks. The FEE trilogy has “Property and Law,” “Justice and Fraternity,” “Property and Plunder,” “Protectionism and Communism,” “Plunder and Law,” “Academic Degrees and Socialism,” “Declaration of War Against the Professors of Political Economy,” “On the Suppression of Industrial Combinations,” “To the Democrats,” “Balance of Trade,” “The Utopian,” “Salt, the Postal Service, and the Tariff,” and the originally unpublished preface of Economic Harmonies, all of which are lacking from the Mises edition. The Mises edition has Capital and Interest and “What Is Money?,” both of which are lacking from the FEE edition; plus the Mises edition is prettier. (And of course there are many Bastiat works absent from both.) Hence the definitive Bastiat collection still lies in our future; but in the meantime both the FEE and the Mises editions are must-haves.

Many Unhappy Returns

By on September 3, 2007 3

As Brad Spangler reminds us, today is not the real Labor Day. The day for commemorating genuine liberatory struggle on behalf of labour against the business/government alliance is May 1st. But if you want a day to commemorate business unionism, the betrayal of the working class, and the co-opting of labour into the business/government alliance, then by all means, today’s your day.

Twice Tucker

By on September 2, 2007 0

Benjamin TuckerAs I mentioned a month ago, I’ve begun putting Benjamin Tucker’s Instead of a Book online. Turns out Charles Johnson has been doing likewise.

He’s doing it linearly while I’m jumping around, so thus far each of our versions has material the other’s doesn’t.

Bones of Contention

By on September 2, 2007 0

I’m sometimes asked (today by email, for example) how historically accurate the Icelandic sagas are thought to be. The answer is: pretty damn good. The information in the sagas matches up well not only with other historical records (the Landnamabok or Book of Settlements, the Gragas law code, etc.) but also with the physical and cultural geography of the island: farm homesteads are where the sagas say they are, named individuals are buried where the sagas say they’re buried, and so forth. (Moreover, wherever the authors of the sagas did perhaps embellish the record, they would presumably have made the society seem more violent than it was, not less.)

EgilToday’s query reminded me of a particularly striking example from a 1995 Scientific American article which I’m pleased to see is now online (it wasn’t the last time I googled it). It’s by Jesse Byock, author of numerous works on medieval Iceland, and makes a case that even an apparently fanciful detail in Egil’s Saga turns out to have a foundation in fact. Check it out, and see also this followup.

All Your Brain Are Belong to Us

By on September 1, 2007 4

So, can any defender of copyright explain why this isn’t a sufficient reductio?

Addendum:

Darn, just thought of a better title for this post: Don’t Memorise This Cartoon!

Ethics in Alabama, Anarchy in Baltimore

By on August 30, 2007 0

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

1. More about my Krakow trip soon (really!). But in the meantime, here’s the Spooner paper I gave at the Krakow conference. It’s also the paper I’m going to present at the Molinari Society meeting in December.

2. Speaking of the Molinari Society, it’ll be holding its fourth annual Symposium in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Baltimore, December 27-30, 2007. Here’s the latest schedule info:

Baltimore waterfront GVIII-4. Saturday, 29 December 2007, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 p.m.
Molinari Society symposium: “Anarchy: It’s Not Just a Good Idea, It’s the Law”
Falkland (Fourth Floor), Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, 700 Aliceanna Street

Session 1, 11:15-12:15:
chair: Jennifer McKitrick (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
speaker: Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute)
title: “A Place for Positive Law: A Contribution to Anarchist Legal Theory”
commentator: John Hasnas (Georgetown University)

Session 2, 12:15-1:15:
chair: Carrie-Ann Biondi (Marymount Manhattan College)
speaker: Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
title: “Inside and Outside Spooner’s Natural Law Jurisprudence”
commentator: Geoffrey Allan Plauché (Louisiana State University)

Also check out the schedules (happily not conflicting) of the AAPSS and ARS. 

Orange Beach 3. The schedule for the Alabama Philosophical Society’s September 21-22 meeting in Orange Beach is also online; Charles and I will be attending that as well, speaking on Vegetarianism and Norms on the Margin and On Making Small Contributions to Evil respectively. It’ll be good to be back at our old venue; Orange Beach and Gulf Shores have been slowly recovering from the onslaught of Hurricane Ivan three years ago, and the conference has been held elsewhere the past three years. (Planning to attend? Tomorrow is the last day to make your hotel reservations at the conference rate.)

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