TLS Podcast Picks: The Rise and Fall of Tuna; Shakespeare’s Impact; Gay Marriage

Libertarian Theory, Protectionism, War
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Recommended podcasts:

  • “How Shakespeare Changed Everything,” KERA Think (Aug. 22, 2012). This is one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve heard in some time—with Stephen Marche, author of How Shakespeare Changed Everything, which details the amazing influence Shakespeare has had on our culture. Interviews with such knowledgeable scholars highlight how great it is to have a society of 7 billion people that can afford to support scholars who can devote such depth to specialized topics. This interview is just a delight to listen to; I have the book on my to-read list. The main libertarian takeaway is some of the examples given to how Shakespeare’s plays have been reworked and remixed over the ages in various contexts. (I touch on some of this in posts in the tag Everything Is a Remix.)
  • “The Rise and Fall of an Improbable Food,” KERA Think (Aug. 23, 2012) A very interesting interview with Andrew F. Smith, author of American Tuna: The Rise and Fall of an Improbable Food. The story is absolutely fascinating: about how tuna went from basically trash-food status with zero percent market, to huge popularity in just a few years in the early 1900s; and then how its popularity increased even more when there were other food shortages during WWI; then how production was hurt when 600 of the tuna boats were pressed into service during WWII and many Japanese-American fishermen were put in concentration camps and other tuna fishermen put into the Navy; how the mylar bags were adopted in part to avoid import tariffs; how the US government encouraged the tuna industry in other countries, in Japan and South America, after WWII in part because of shortages it has imposed by previous policies, leading ultimately to the devastation of the American tuna industry. Utterly fascinating interview. And it highlights the tragic effects of and distortion caused by state intervention in the market.
  • “Why the GOP Should Embrace Gay Rights,” Reason.tv (Aug. 22, 2012). A short interview with David Lampo, publications director at the libertarian Cato Institute and the author of the new book, A Fundamental Freedom: Why Republicans, Conservatives, and Libertarians Should Support Gay Rights. “Despite the influence in the party of social conservatives and the Religious Right, Lampo argues that if Republicans actually followed their own rhetoric about limiting the size and scope of government, they would be able to attract gay and lesbian voters who otherwise vote Democratic. An active member of Virginia’s Log Cabin Republicans, Lampo believes the party’s acceptance of marriage equality is inevitable given the huge social gains gays have made in recent decades.” For my own take on why libertarians should support gay marriage, see my post California Gay Marriage Law Overturned: What Should Libertarians Think?.
  • Update: see also Wendy McElroy, “The Art of Being Free,” CSPAN-2 (July 14, 2012). A discussion at Freedomfest with the iconic libertarian feminist author of The Art of Being Free.

 

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TLS Podcast Picks: Donald Harris on copyright law and alcohol prohibition, Tucker on Anarchy

Drug Policy, IP Law, Libertarian Theory, Podcast Picks
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Recommended podcasts:

  • “Donald Harris on copyright law and alcohol prohibition,” Surprisingly Free (Aug. 14, 2012) “Donald P. Harris, associate professor of law at Temple University discusses the regulation of file sharing. Harris explains that Alcohol Prohibition of the 1920s and 1930s as an historical example of laws that were inconsistent with the vast majority of society’s morals and norms. Looking back, one can see many similarities between the Alcohol and Filesharing Prohibitions. Harris suggests, then, that lessons learned from the failed “noble experiment” of Alcohol Prohibition should be applied to the current filesharing controversy. Doing so, he advocates legalizing certain noncommercial filesharing. A scheme along those lines would better comport with societal norms, he argues, and would force new business models to replace outdated and ineffective business models.” Harris is not an IP abolitionist, but he does at least suggest we consider legalizing file sharing for noncommerical uses.
  • “The Spy Who Saved D-Day,” Slate’s The Afterword (Aug. 16, 2012). An interview with Stephan Talty. “Juan Pujol was an underachieving Barcelona chicken farmer until World War II, when he transformed himself into an accomplished anti-Nazi spy. Using only his amazing gift for inventing credible lies, Pujol became Germany’s most valuable secret agent—but he was really a double agent, working with Britain’s intelligence service. Stephan Talty’s book Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler & Saved D-Daytells the story of Pujol’s complex deception and how he convinced Germany’s high command that the D-Day invasion of Normandy was just a feint, while the real attack was aimed at Calais. The interview lasts around 30 minutes.”
  • Tucker, A Beautiful AnarchyJeff Tucker discusses his new book A Beautiful Anarchy: how to Create your own Civilization in the Digital Age in this vimeo video and in an interview with Stefan Molyneux.
  • “Ohanian on the Great Recession and the Labor Market,” Econtalk (Aug. 20, 2012). “Lee Ohanian of UCLA talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the recession, the recovery, and the state of labor market. Ohanian describes the unusual aspects of this recession and recovery in the United States as shown by the labor market and the unusual performance of hours worked, productivity, and wages. He also discusses the behavior of business investment and speculates as to why this recession and the recovery has been so different in the United States. The conversation closes with a discussion of the role of the foreclosure process in encouraging unemployment.” I found interesting Ohanian’s discussion of wage stickiness—for example, how wages could fall in response to a recession. He says that workers are quite willing to work for lower wages in response to changed market conditions, but that various state interventions into the market inhibit this adjustment, from soft coercion to regulations to laws.

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The Twentieth Anniversary of Kinsella’s “Estoppel” Defense of Libertarian Rights

Libertarian Theory, The Basics
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It is on the edge of Fall 2012, and I realized today that it is about twenty years since the publication of my first scholarly article, Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights. It was published in Reason Papers No. 17 (Fall 1992), a journal established and then edited by my friend Tibor Machan. In How I Became A Libertarian, I explain how it came about:

By 1988 I was in law school, and becoming a more well rounded libertarian, having read by this time Rothbard, Mises, Bastiat, the Tannehills, and a non-trivial portion of the books offered in the Laissez-Faire Books catalog. In that year there were two significant events in my life, from a libertarian perspective. One was Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s controversial and provocative article in Liberty, “The Ultimate Justification of the Private Property Ethic” (related articles linked here). In this article Hoppe sets forth his “argumentation ethics,” which holds that the libertarian private property ethic is implied in the very activity of argumentation—because those engaged in argumentation already presuppose the value of conflict-avoidance and the ability to control property and thus, those arguing in favor of socialism contradict themselves.

The second thing was that I encountered the legal principle of “estoppel” in my contracts class. This is the ubiquitous legal principle that precludes someone from asserting a legal claim or position that is inconsistent with earlier statements or behavior. I remember sitting in contracts class, as Professor Morris lectured on this topic, thinking “Eureka!” to myself, as I began to see that the concept of estoppel meshed perfectly with libertarian logic (and also with Hoppe’s argumentation ethics). The libertarian non-aggression principle holds that force may only be used in response to (initiated) force. There is a nice symmetry here. One may use force, if and only if it is response to initiated force (aggression). …

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Information longs to be free, but statists gonna state

Legal System, Police Statism, Statism, Technology
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It is the tendency of the state to compile as much information as possible about its subjects, but to persecute individuals who collect and divulge information about its agents and the way they operate. The state and its supporters want to keep tabs on you, but angrily (and violently) protest when you try to keep track of state actors. In the news today we saw two examples of this:

  • WikiLeaks has fallen victim to a major distributed denial of service attack for which the regime apologists at Anti-Leaks have taken responsibility (though there is speculation about this being a state-sponsored action). The attack, now more than a week in duration, coincides with the whistle-blower site’s recent release of the lastest dump of documents gleaned from the Stratfor intelligence leak. Recently released documents detail a privately administered domestic intelligence-gathering operation called TrapWire. According to PC Magazine and Russia Today, the leaks reveal that the TrapWire program is designed to compile information on targets across the United States from a network of surveillance cameras, incorporating vehicle locations and behavioral data in order to detect patterns that may signal that someone is involved in undesirable activity. The companies behind TrapWire, Abraxas and Stratfor, are reportedly chock full of former U.S. intelligence officials still serving their former masters.

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TLS Podcast Picks: Francis Scott Key, Pro-Slavery Police-State Thug

Anti-Statism, History, Podcast Picks
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Recommended podcasts:

  • Francis Scott Key and the Forgotten Washington Race Riot of 1835, KERA Think (Aug. 9, 2012). “What role did ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ lyricist Francis Scott Key play in preserving slavery? We’ll talk this hour with Jefferson Morley, former Washington correspondent for Salon and author of the new book Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835.” This is a fascinating interview. The book sounds great. Key, known for the nauseating, jingoistic, nationalist Star Spangled Banner, was a wheeler-dealer lawyer-politician who parlayed his fame with the song into Washington power, and was finally recruited by Andrew Jackson to help suppress the growing anti-slavery movement in Washington, D.C. He jumped into the job with zeal, arresting and prosecuting people who wrote in favor of abolition or slaves’ rights—by charging them with sedition or libel (or seditious libel). Another evil “patriot” (like Washington who conscripted slaves, used his slave’s teeth for his false teeth, shot deserters, killed tax rebels, and so on). Next time you see “patriots” putting hand over heart to the “Star Spangled Banner,” remind them of the scoundrel fascist who wrote it. He makes Emma Lazarus seem heroic.

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