First Toronto Austrian Scholars Conference

(Austrian) Economics, Education
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The Mises Institute Canada is holding its first Austrian Scholars Conference in Toronto, later this year. From its website:

October 5-6, 2012. 

University of Toronto, St. George Campus

Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Faculty, Students, Independent Scholars and  Observers Register Here

In order to help fulfill it’s mission, the Mises Institute of Canada is launching the Toronto Austrian Scholars Conference. The conference is designed to combine the opportunities of a professional meeting, with the added attraction of hearing and presenting new and innovative research, engaging in vigorous debate, and interacting with likeminded scholars who share research interests.

Papers and panels cover a wide range of fields that impact on the Austrian paradigm, including: monetary theory; international trade; money and banking; methodology; history of thought; economic history; business cycles; geography; interventionism; literature; political philosophy; philosophy of science; society, culture, and religion; business regulation; environmental political economy; and history and theory of war.

Participants who wish to present their papers must send an abstract to redmond@mises.ca no later than August 24th, 2012. Submissions will be accepted until all the time slots are taken. Abstracts should be two pages or less with double spacing, one-inch margins and 12 point font. Authors should indicate in the body of the e-mail if they would be willing to volunteer as discussants and/or session moderators.

Submission review and selection will be handled by Predrag Rajsic of the University of Guelph,  Walter Block the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Chair in Economics and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and David Howden, chair of the Division of Business and Social Sciences at Saint Louis University Madrid.

The director of the conference is Redmond Weissenberger, Founding Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada.

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15 Years of the Monetary Policy Committee (UK)

(Austrian) Economics, Statism
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A post at the Cobden Centre, 15 years of the MPC, calls to attention “a brilliant video from our friends at SaveOurSavers, celebrating 15 years of the Monetary Policy Committee”. The video skewers the hypocrisy, lies, and inane economic theories spouted by or in defense of monetary central planners and their inept failure to meet its 2% inflation target.

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Kinsella Austrian AV Club Interview—Mises Institute Canada

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Business, IP Law, Libertarian Theory
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I was interviewed yesterday by Redmond Weissenberger, Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada. We had a long-ranging discussion of intellectual property and libertarian theory, including a discussion about exactly how Ayn Rand and other libertarians got off track on this issue, in part because of flaws regarding “labor” and “creationism” in Locke’s original homesteading argument; inconsistencies between Rand’s support for IP and her recognition that production means rearranging existing property; and also the different roles of scarce means and knowledge in the praxeological structure of human action. (For more on these issues, see my blog posts Locke on IP; Mises, Rothbard, and Rand on Creation, Production, and ‘Rearranging’, Hume on Intellectual Property and the Problematic “Labor” Metaphor, Rand on IP, Owning “Values”, and ‘Rearrangement Rights’, and The Patent Defense League and Defensive Patent Pooling, and my article “Intellectual Freedom and Learning Versus Patent and Copyright.”)

The video is below; audio file is here (69MB). (Trivia: I used my iPad, running the Skype app, for this interview. More stable and better camera than a MacBook.)

[C4SIF]

[now podcast at KOL165]

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Laissez Faire Books Launches the Laissez Faire Club

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Business, Education, History, Libertarian Theory, The Basics
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Laissez Faire Books

Laissez Faire Books (LFB) is a seminal libertarian institution that dates back to 1972, six years before I was born. In its heyday, it played a central role in the libertarian movement as the largest libertarian bookseller, a publisher of libertarian books, and an old-school social network, hosting social gatherings and other events. This was before my time.

I’d never bought a book from LFB until yesterday (the 19th). By the time I became a libertarian in my undergraduate years at Louisiana State University, after reading the work of Ayn Rand (starting with The Fountainhead) at the urging of a friend, I was able to learn about libertarianism and Austrian economics from a large and growing sea of resources online. I bought books from Amazon and the Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI), read online articles and blogs, and took advantage of the growing library of digitized books and other media put online and hosted by the LvMI.

Laizzez Faire Books was fading into irrelevancy and, I think, in danger of being shuttered for good as it was passed from new owner to new owner. Enter Agora Financial, the latest owner of LFB, and hopefully the organization that will oversee its resuscitation and return to relevancy. With Jeffrey Tucker at the helm as executive editor, the prospects for profitability, innovation, and spreading the message of liberty are exciting indeed.

Many, if not most, of you know Jeffrey Tucker as the editorial vice president who led the LvMI into the digital age, building it into the open-source juggernaut with a vast online and free library of liberty and a thriving community that it is today. We were sad to see him leave that beloved institution, but eager to see what he would do in charge of a for-profit publisher and bookstore. Now we’ve been given the first taste.

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LibertariaNation [Italy] Interview with Kinsella on IP and Libertarianism

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Corporatism, IP Law, Libertarian Theory, Podcasts
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I was interviewed Feb. 23, 2012, by Fabrizio Sitzia of the Italian libertarian group LibertariaNation.org. It was posted today on YouTube. We discussed intellectual property and related issues such as SOPA, plagiarism, IP-by-contract, and other libertarian issues such as prospects for liberty in the future; the importance of technology, the Internet, and globalism; Ron Paul and electoral politics; and libertarian sentiments and receptiveness among today’s young people. The audio file is here, and streamed below. (See also Italian Libertarian IP Debate.)

[C4SIF]

Now at KOL162.

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