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Travelin’ Man

By on March 8, 2011 3

This semester is shaping up to be the most conference-intensive I’ve had. In January I had a double conference in La Jolla (a Liberty Fund on contemporary classical liberal thought, followed by a workshop on John Tomasi’s forthcoming book Free Market Fairness) and an IHS conference in Fredericksburg. Then this past weekend was my department’s annual conference (schedule here). As for what’s coming up:

Mises Institute

1. Austrian Scholars Conference, Mises Institute, Auburn AL, March 10-12. Our Molinari Symposium on Spontaneous Order, originally scheduled for the Eastern APA in Boston last December, has been resurrected at the ASC thanks to the Mises Institute’s gracious rescue (despite the panel’s being, as Charles notes, “rather different fare from that normally offered at the ASC”).

Also at the ASC, Molinari Institute Research Associate (and Alford Prize winner) Gil Guillory will be presenting a paper on “The Structure of Production of Free Market Adjudication” earlier on Friday, and I’ll be chairing a panel on “Socialism, Racism, and Method” on Saturday; for details, see the schedule.

CEVRO Institute

2. Prague Conference on Political Economy, CEVRO Institute, Prague, Czech Republic, March 25-27. I’ve organised a panel on free-market anarchism with Ed Stringham; see the schedule here and abstracts here. This’ll be my third trip to Prague (making the Czech Republic the first European country I’ll have visited more than twice).

the hideous coast of Roatan

3. Future of Free Cities Conference, Roatán, April 3-5. Roatán is an island off the coast of Honduras, though the conference is sponsored by Guatemala’s Francisco Marroquín University. This’ll be a new southernmost point for me. I’m not making a presentation, just participating in general discussion. Talk of seasteading is to be expected.

Chicago

4. Mises Circle: Strategies for Changing Minds Toward Liberty, Chicago IL, April 9. I’ll be speaking on what I used to call “outreach to the left.” Here’s more info.

Nassau Sheraton

5. Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE) conference, Nassau, Bahamas, April 10-12. I’ll be chairing a sequel to last year’s Free-Market Anti-Capitalism panel; this time around we’ve got Steven Horwitz on “Banks as the Anti-Capitalism at the Heart of Capitalism,” Sheldon Richman on “The Gilded Age: No Golden Era,” Darian Worden on “Capitalism, Free Enterprise, and Progress: Partners or Adversaries?,” and Charles Johnson on “Markets Without Commercialism; Commerce Without Capitalism.”

Unfortunately, our session conflicts with a session on Anarchism featuring, inter alia, Dan D’Amico and Bruce Benson – argh! Maybe next time we do a FMAC panel we should stick “Anarchism” in the title to make the organisers less likely to schedule such conflicts.

San Diego Hilton Bayfront

6. Pacific APA, San Diego CA, April 20-23. I’ll be a commentator on a panel on “Exploitation and the State” on the afternoon of the 20th, and then our other snowed-out Molinari Symposium, the Author-Meets-Critics session on Gary Chartier’s Economic Justice and Natural Law, is being resurrected on the evening of the 23rd; schedule details here.

When we had to cancel in Boston, Charles suggested inquiring whether the Pacific APA might accept us as refugees. I thought the odds were low, as the Pacific’s schedule was already posted. And the national APA office confirmed my pessimism, telling me there was no way. But then the Pacific graciously said yes! (Charles also suggested asking the Mises Institute about having the other symposium at the ASC. So thank you Pacific APA, thank you Mises Institute, and thank you Charles.)

Gary Chartier's ECONOMIC JUSTICE AND NATURAL LAW

Our session was added too late to be listed on the APA’s online program, but I’m told it will be in the printed program. (Yes, I thought it’d be the other way around too.) Unfortunately, the exploitation session conflicts with a session critiquing the work of my friend Elizabeth Brake (so I won’t be able to play the role of Brake claque), and the Chartier session conflicts with the Ayn Rand Society (that fact plus the late hour means turnout may be low); but on the plus side, Gary Chartier, who would have had to miss the Boston meeting because he’s boycotting air travel, will be able to attend the San Diego meeting (as it’s within driving distance). In any case, April in San Diego is a lot nicer than December in Boston!

I’ve got other stuff scheduled for beyond this semester – but that’s surely enough for now.

Pyramid Power

By on February 11, 2011 2

Mubarak and Associates

Congratulations to the Egyptian people for successfully ousting their dictator – and through peaceful mass resistance, too. Several libertarians have pointed out how current events are vindicating the lessons of La Boétie (if it was La Boétie); see, e.g., Sheldon Richman here and Lew Rockwell here.

In my Molinari Symposium paper I wrote:

The inadequacy of violent means for the state’s maintenance might be doubted, of course. After all, while La Boétie blithely tells us, “Resolve to serve no more, and you are once freed,” this advice might seem to run up against a collective action problem: if only a few individuals withdraw their support while most of their fellow subjects maintain their compliance, the force of the state will ordinarily be quite sufficient to bring them in line. It might thus seem as though the state could compel all by force, simply by compelling each. … But the effectiveness of collective action problems by themselves in preventing mass disobedience is probably overstated; when the public mood is strong enough, collective-action constraints seem to melt away, as for example with mass resistance to the Ceauşescu regime in Romania in 1989.

We can now add another example: the Mubarak regime in Egypt in 2011. (We should also add the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, whose overthrow helped to inspire events in Egypt.)

Of course Egypt’s not out of the woods yet. While the people have in fact been maintaining order anarchistically for the past few weeks, they are not ideologically anarchist, do not yet understand the extent of their power and potential for autonomy, and so will doubtless end up supporting the replacement of the Mubarak regime with some other state regime – and what sort of regime they will get remains to be seen. But it is to be hoped that they have learned this much: if they tire of the new regime, they know how to get rid of it.

Let’s hope the rest of the world’s governed learns the same lesson.

The Lovely Bones

By on February 10, 2011 1

Viking skull

I see that Jesse Byock’s 1995 article “Egil’s Bones” is now online. (See also this earlier piece.) The article helps to support the historical reliability of the Icelandic sagas by showing how an aspect of Egil’s Saga once considered fanciful – the protagonist’s skull’s invulnerability to axe-blows – may have a basis in fact.

As of 2005, Byock was seeking Egil’s grave for confirmation; I’ve heard nothing since, though the project seems to be active.

Women in the TARDIS

By on February 3, 2011 3
River Song and Amy Pond

River Song and Amy Pond - the two most important female characters that Steven Moffat has created for DOCTOR WHO

Teresa Jusino loves the way Steven Moffat writes female characters for Doctor Who. (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.)

Nivair Gabriel hates the way Steven Moffat writes female characters for Doctor Who. (See here.)

Funny thing is, I’m largely in agreement with both Jusino and Gabriel; they just focus on different things. There are good and bad aspects of Moffat’s portrayal of women, and Jusino and Gabriel between them provide helpful analyses of each.

(In related news, I enjoyed Moffat’s satire on gender roles in his earlier series Coupling; but he clearly takes those roles to be largely innate whereas I take them to be largely constructed, so I actually enjoyed the humor in a somewhat different manner from what Moffat intended. It’s like the different ways one would enjoy Yes, Minister depending on whether one thought that a viable alternative to bureaucratic government was possible – laughing at foibles that one takes to be inevitable features of the human condition versus laughing at foibles in a way that can lead to discrediting and combating them.)

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