Anarchy 101 at Lebanon Valley College

(Austrian) Economics, Anti-Statism, Education, Libertarian Theory
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Well, technically, Anarchy 100, a seminar at Lebanon Valley College. I was alerted by a friend to this interesting course by Michael Kitchens, an Assistant Professor of Psychology. The reading materials include many articles and books from Austro-anarchists such as Roderick Long, Bob Murphy, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Walter Block, Anthony Gregory, Tom DiLorenzo, Lew Rockwell, Rothbard, and myself. This is cool. The reading list would make a good book. From the course page:

SELECT RESOURCES/INFORMATION

Books

Introductory Essays on Anarchy

The State & Anarchy 

Market Anarchy

Justice Anarchy

Defense  & Security

Roads & Highways

Civilization, Culture, & Life

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When Will the Voters Learn?

Anti-Statism, Business, Corporatism, Democracy, Education, History, Libertarian Theory, Mercantilism, Nanny Statism, Statism, Taxation, The Left, The Right
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“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” ~ Clay Shirky

You know the slavery Kool-Aid is working well when those who are oppressed petition their oppressors for more of that which helps keep them oppressed.

For instance, public education is a tool that was designed–specifically and directly–as a means of controlling the hoi polloi.  The educational system of compulsory public education championed by Horace Mann, chock-full of multiple-choice testing perfected by Frederick J. Kelly, feeding into statistical models based upon the work of (eugenicist) Sir Francis Galton, was (and is) designed to fulfill the need for employees who are primed and ready to inhabit factories where efficiency can be measured in ways developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor. (The fact that so few of such factories currently exist in America should also be telling, but that’s a different discussion.) Mann believed “universal public education was the best way to turn the nation’s unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens.” The whole thing was designed to produce a seething throng of people ready to take orders, stand in line, ask few questions, and install bumpers all day–accepting the interminable boredom of such a life–while their over-lords made a ton of money.  Free and compulsory public education was never intended to create inquisitive, risk-taking, leaders. Or entrepreneurs and/or business owners.  Or frankly, owners of anything! Yet, people clamor that “education is a right” and “we need more funding for our schools” despite the inescapable fact that these same crap holes are doing their best at producing children incapable of independent thought and unable to read a book (or a blueprint), solve a simple mathematics problem, or devise a new strategy.  It’s damned sad, really.

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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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