Mimi & Eunice: Copyright Reform
IP Law, Mimi & Eunice on IP
This one’s going into the book.
~*~
This is a syndicated post, which originally appeared at Mimi and Eunice » IP. View original post.
Mimi & Eunice: Copyright Reform Read Post »
Helmet Laws and Needless deaths
Health Care, Nanny Statism, Political Correctness, Victimless CrimesYahoo News reports the death of a motorcyclist during a protest ride against New York’s helmet laws. While it is certainly tempting to simply cite this as a case of someone “asking for it” and getting it, consider the specifics of this case: Philip Contos was riding without a helmet at this place and at this time specifically because he was protesting against the state. Whether or not he normally wore a helmet, even, is irrelevant. He would not have been riding there and then if not for the state. The sad truth is that protesting laws against risky behavior unfortunately requires actually engaging in risky behavior. I, a nonsmoker, despise anti-smoking laws. How could I protest against these laws, however? By engaging in the banned behavior is the most obvious way. So, too, with helmet laws. At minimum, Contos’s death, whenever it would have happened, would not have happened at that time at that place, under those circumstances, except for the meddling of the busybodies who claim the right to decide what is best for a 55 year old man.
Helmet Laws and Needless deaths Read Post »
Mises on the Beach
(Austrian) Economics, The Left, Vulgar PoliticsWhen Michelle Bachmann confessed to taking the writings of Ludwig von Mises with her on vacation, I assumed she used the august Austrian economist as a soporific — not because Mises isn’t worth reading, or not exciting to read (I can’t tell you how my heart pounded when I first unleashed myself onto The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science), but because Bachmann has never said anything to suggest a scholarly or subtle mind, the kind of mind best suited for pleasure in reading Mises.
But a Salon writer, Andrew Leonard, has proven himself less dismissive of Bachmann than I. He, knowing nothing of Mises, set out to read Human Action. His conclusion? Well, he didn’t get very far into the book. But he did get far enough to tell us what he found. After reading a few chapters, he was struck by
…
Mises on the Beach Read Post »
Mimi & Eunice: Brand Delusion
IP Law, Mimi & Eunice on IP
Based on a brilliant typo in a techdirt.com comment.
~*~
This is a syndicated post, which originally appeared at Mimi and Eunice » IP. View original post.
Mimi & Eunice: Brand Delusion Read Post »
Re-Imagining Marketopia: A Reply to Terence Ball
Drug Policy, Libertarian Theory, Private Security & Law, The BasicsA decade ago Terence Ball wrote a critique of some Frankenstein-like creature meant to represent free market ideology. He robbed the graves of men and women as diverse as Murray Rothbard, Margaret Thatcher, Robert Nozick and Ayn Rand to put it together and came up with something that no libertarian would endorse, I suspect, but which nevertheless is recognizable as libertarian(ish). It may not be the same species, but it is in the same genus. Or at least the same family.
He imagined a country called Marketopia and described how life would be there, with the purpose of showing us that while markets are good for some things, there are areas where they are inappropriate. As he wrote, “why do some (or perhaps all) Marketopian practices make many – perhaps most – of us uneasy or queasy, or worse?” The great problem with his essay is that he never demonstrates to the reader’s satisfaction that he understands what his own argument is. He claims to be interested in three questions: Why do people get queasy at the practices of Marketopia, what distortions of the language would Marketopia produce and are we already headed towards Marketopia.
About the second question I care nothing at all, and about the third… well, watching a statist fretting over how close we are to a Free Market is a bit like listening to a neocon quaking that Iran presents a military threat to the United States. It would be less embarrassing to watch a grown man sleep with a night light to protect him from the Bogey Man in his closet. The first question bears some scrutiny, however, but I wish I could do it knowing what exactly Dr. Ball had in mind.
Is this Marketopia supposed to be what would always happen if libertarianism ever won the day, or is he just demonstrating how market activity is inappropriate for some relationships? If the latter is his point, I would say he came up with a handful of examples where I agree with him, but what does he propose to do about it? If the former, it should be pointed out that many of these activities are legal now but do not occur.
…
Re-Imagining Marketopia: A Reply to Terence Ball Read Post »