Recommended podcasts:
TLS Podcast Picks: Tucker on Improving Society; Riggenbach on Nozick Read Post »
Our fellow blogger and friend Vijay Boyapati is running 26 miles for the cause of Austrian Economics and Libertarianism. He will match up to $13,000 from the donors (you can donate 5, 10 or 15 dollars an up and he will match your donation) for a total of $26,000 to be donated to the Ludwig von Mises Institute. That is $1000 per mile. The Ludwig von Mises Institute was surprised by Vijay’s spontaneous initiative and so are the rest of us. The donations amount to $7,500 at this time, so to our readers I say “join the campaign!”
Run Vijay, run!
Activism for the long run, literally Read Post »
“A debate on ESPN about Kobe being in that “Call of Duty: Black Ops” commercial, holding a rifle, convinced me of two things…” ~ First Tweet
“…One, ESPN has a lot of retarded debates about issues that are less than important.” ~ Second Tweet
“…Two, I watch too much ESPN.” ~ Third Tweet
My previous blog rant about a sports figure—regarding the LeBron Decision and the wrath it wrought—opened with this line, “I have an admission to make…” Here we go again.
I have another admission to make, this time about the Tweets I posted, as shown above. I was wrong about ESPN. They don’t debate about issues that are less than important, well, not in the way I originally opined. (That those debates remain somewhat retarded is not similarly incorrect.) This issue is not only important, but also emblematic of and intertwined with many other issues. In fact, it dawned on me as I watched a panel discussion on “Outside the Lines: First Report,” that the Kobe-holding-a-rifle-in-a-commercial issue is both important and confusing. By the way, the coverage, particularly on Yahoo, is worth checking out.
This issue is—these issues are—important because the discussion of black men—particularly prominent black men—and weapons, is tied up in the same psychological murkiness that I attempted to clarify via the lens of racist gun control. The issue is confusing because any discussion seems to meander through any number of sub-issues, some germane and some peripheral, at best. (As an aside, my third admission via Tweet, that I watch too much ESPN, is hardly worth debating. It is what it is.)
That professional sports are fraught with racist collectivism is far from a discovery. Furthermore, these issues are not new, which is probably why they tend to recur. Given the exorbitant coverage of celebrity in the MSM, any time a prominent black man makes news, it presents an excellent opportunity to drive viewership. Paraphrasing the old quote from It’s a Wonderful Life about angels and ringing bells, every time a high-profile black man does anything even remotely newsworthy, a budding TV producer gets his wings.
My own view is that the enchantment with these issues—and their presentation via sports television—is indicative of more than a sports-centric misinterpretation of value. Plaxico Burris is in jail in some measure because he is a high-profile black athlete. I might argue that Mike Vick went to jail for much the same reasons. Not to put too fine a point on it, but “uppity Negros” have been getting whipped in America for about as long as there has been an America. (I know. I know. Again, that’s unfair.) Ergo, figuratively whipping them via the court of ostensible public opinion via sports entertainment is a tried-and-true strategy.
…
Why Can’t Kobe Get Any Love? Read Post »
Dear Dr. Thompson: Felony Murder, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Last Gonzo Campaign
Ghost Road Press, 2010
by Matthew L. Moseley
Reviewed by Ryan McMaken
Hunter S. Thompson was one of the 20th century’s greatest literary social critics, and one of the most anti-authoritarian. In the tradition of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, Thompson never flinched at exposing the hypocrisies and contradictions of American life and ideology, and his contempt for authority permeated not just his writing but his life as well.
Thompson killed himself in 2005, shortly before his remains were shot out of a giant cannon in Aspen, Colorado. Yet, right up to the end, Thompson made himself a gadfly and a nuisance and an enemy of the agents of the state who have so much power over the lives of the powerless.
In Dear Dr. Thompson, writer Matthew Moseley has provided an entertaining first person account of Hunter S. Thompson and his “Last Gonzo Campaign.” Through the book, which is both a true crime account and a study of Thompson the man, Moseley details Thompson’s involvement in the Lisl Auman case in which, Auman, then barely out of her teens, was kidnapped by a drug addled gangbanger who murdered a police officer. Later, prosecutors claimed Auman had assisted the murderer and, thanks to media hysteria and prosecutorial recklessness in the name of “sending a message” to cop killers, Auman was sentenced to life in prison without parole under the felony murder law in Colorado.
Then one day, while serving her life sentence in a Colorado prison, Auman wrote a letter to Hunter S. Thompson a few hours away in Aspen. Thompson’s assistant Deborah Fuller read the letter aloud to Thompson. The letter spawned the “Free Lisl!” campaign which would turn out to be Thompson’s last great campaign against injustice.
The Murder
Lisl Auman was handcuffed in the back of a police car in the parking lot of an apartment complex when skinhead Matthaeus Jaenig, whom Auman had met that morning, murdered a police officer.
Denver’s Westword newspaper provides a concise description of the scene: …
Hunter S. Thompson’s Last Stand Read Post »
[Now updated at my site]
Rothbard has so many amazing works. Some of my favorite of his articles include “The Mantle of Science,” “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution” (pdf), “Beyond Is and Ought,” “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” “Left and Right: Prospects for Liberty,” and various chapters in The Ethics of Liberty such as “‘Human Rights’ As Property Rights,” “Knowledge, True and False,” and “Property Rights and the Theory of Contracts.” I think my favorite collection of his works is The Logic of Action One and Two–just chock full of classic, amazing pieces [now online as Economic Controversies]. And yet another favorite is The Free Market Reader–one of the best introductions to free market thinking; see Rothbard’s opening chapter, “Ten Great Economic Myths” (also ch. 2 in another great collection, Making Economic Sense).
Case in point is his stunning, amazing article in The Logic of Action One, “Justice and Property Rights” [and, again, this is also in Economic Controversies]. This piece was published in two forms in 1974: first, in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, and is available online here. The second version was also published in 1974, in Property in a Humane Economy, Samuel L. Blumenfeld, ed. (online here).
Now, The Logic of Action is not online and not easy to find, but this article in my copy of that book is heavily underlined. But luckily the Blumenfeld book is online at Mises.org. The two pieces seem identical but the latter version appends an important concluding paragraph that is not present in the first one:
It might be charged that our theory of justice in property titles is deficient because in the real world most landed (and even other) property has a past history so tangled that it becomes impossible to identify who or what has committed coercion and therefore who the current just owner may be. But the point of the “homestead principle” is that if we don’t know what crimes have been committed in acquiring the property in the past, or if we don’t know the victims or their heirs, then the current owner becomes the legitimate and just owner on homestead grounds. In short, if Jones owns a piece of land at the present time, and we don’t know what crimes were committed to arrive at the current title, then Jones, as the current owner, becomes as fully legitimate a property owner of this land as he does over his own person. Overthrow of existing property title only becomes legitimate if the victims or their heirs can present an authenticated, demonstrable, and specific claim to the property. Failing such conditions, existing landowners possess a fully moral right to their property.
This part was no doubt added by Rothbard to combat the arguments of some, such as some left-libertarians, who want to argue that existing property titles are illegitimate because of their non-immaculate origins and, presumably, ought to be wrested from current nominal owners, especially the wealthy, and I suppose redistributed to the proles.
[Update: See Rothbard’s “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle,” from Libertarian Forum, vol. 1.6, June 15, 1969, which may be what Kevin Carson has in mind here:
I’m quite friendly to George, and think the lines between individualism and Georgism are a lot less harsh than (say) Tucker would have believed. But I believe a great deal of rent could be eliminated simply by removing subsidies to economic centralization and positive externalties created by taxpayers–not to mention by removing state enforcement of title to vacant and unimproved land. If as much urban infrastructure as possible were funded by user fees, and cities broken up into lots of mixed-use neighborhoods in which residential areas had their own miniature “downtown” cores, differential rent would be far less significant. I think a majority of George’s aims could be achieved by Tucker’s means, or even by a throughgoing application of Rothbard’s means.]
This piece is just so full of great insights. Hoppe has noted previously that there are arguments in Ethics of Liberty that basically anticipated Hoppe’s “argumentation ethics” defense of libertarian rights (see my post Hoppe and Intellectual Property: On Standing on the Shoulders of Giants). …
Justice and Property Rights: Rothbard on Scarcity, Property, Contracts…Read More »
Justice and Property Rights: Rothbard on Scarcity, Property, Contracts… Read Post »
