Liberty

Complexity, Permissionless Innovation, and the English Dance

Complexity, Economics, Film, Liberty, Uncategorized / By

Recently on EconTalk Russ Roberts talked with Duke University’s Mike Munger about permissionless innovation. The discussion focused on Mike’s recent essay on permissionless innovation, in which he claimed that “permissionless innovation, a strong presumption in favor of allowing experimentation with new technologies and with new business platforms that use those technologies” is the most important, …

Complexity, Permissionless Innovation, and the English Dance Read More »

Nancy Maclean’s Generalized Rewriting of James Buchanan’s Views on Democracy

2 Comments / Economics, Liberty, Politics, Uncategorized / By

I have only read a small bit of Nancy MacLean’s book on James M. Buchanan, public choice, and politics. I’m reluctant to buy a copy, but I wanted to see if it was as bad as some critics have said. (Now you know something of my limited knowledge of and pre-existing bias against the book. …

Nancy Maclean’s Generalized Rewriting of James Buchanan’s Views on Democracy Read More »

Fun with Footnotes (a Game of Scholarly Discovery)

4 Comments / Books, Economics, Liberty, Politics, Social change / By

“Let’s … have … fun … with … footnote[s],” MacLean said.* Here is a simple game of scholarship that anyone can play and everyone who plays by accepted norms of scholarship wins!** How to play: Take the recently published book Democracy in Chains, open it randomly to a page in the text, find a footnote …

Fun with Footnotes (a Game of Scholarly Discovery) Read More »

Pencil or Peach, Either Way, a Marvel of Decentralized Coordination

Economics, Education, Liberty / By

Many of you are probably already familiar with Leonard Read’s famous 1958 story I, Pencil. Told through the eyes of a pencil, it describes the process of producing a pencil and how many people are involved in doing so, but without ever having met or consciously, deliberately set out a plan under the control of …

Pencil or Peach, Either Way, a Marvel of Decentralized Coordination Read More »

Online Library of Liberty Forum on Mccloskey’s Bourgeois Era

1 Comment / Economic history, Economics, Liberty / By

At its Online Library of Liberty, Liberty Fund hosts a monthly “Liberty Matters” forum in which a set of scholars discusses a particular set of ideas. This month’s forum features Deirdre McCloskey‘s Bourgeois Era series of books, two of which have been published (Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity). McCloskey’s main argument is that the various material …

Online Library of Liberty Forum on Mccloskey’s Bourgeois Era Read More »

Pauline Maier on Colonial Radicalism

Books, Liberty / By

With Independence Day upon us, my bedtime reading for the past couple of weeks has become timely. Pauline Maier, the MIT historian who unfortunately passed away last year, published From Resistance to Revolution in 1972. It’s a carefully researched and well-written account, weaving together reports from contemporaneous sources, of the increasing radicalization of American colonists …

Pauline Maier on Colonial Radicalism Read More »

A Relatively Thoughful View of Libertarianism from a Progressive-liberal Perspective

2 Comments / Liberty, Politics / By

Salon has published a lot of nonsense on libertarianism (e.g., anything by Michael Lind on the topic). So it was surprising, yesterday, to find that Kim Messick’s Salon essay on libertarianism was relatively thoughtful. No perfect, by any means, just better than most progressive-liberal attempts at criticizing libertarianism. The author at least gets basic points right and would surely score higher than …

A Relatively Thoughful View of Libertarianism from a Progressive-liberal Perspective Read More »

“That—that—is What We Are For: Voluntary Associations, in All Their Richness and Bewildering Complexity”

Economics, Environmental policy, Liberty / By

The above is a quote from Duke political economist (and friend of KP) Mike Munger, who also blogs at Kids Prefer Cheese and Euvoluntary Exchange, and is a frequent guest on EconTalk. Mike’s written a thoughtful and interesting reflection in the Freeman on what libertarians stand for. In many ways it’s a riff on Toqueville …

“That—that—is What We Are For: Voluntary Associations, in All Their Richness and Bewildering Complexity” Read More »

Public Choice Theory: Skwire’s First Law

5 Comments / Economics, Law, Liberty, Politics / By

Some time last spring, my friend and occasional KP contributor Sarah Skwire formulated on Facebook what’s now dubbed “Skwire’s First Law”, and we’ve been using it, kicking its tires, and discussing it all summer. In a timely manner (given what we’ve learned this summer about widespread, unwarranted government surveillance and the impending likelihood that yet …

Public Choice Theory: Skwire’s First Law Read More »

Copyright © 2022 Knowledge Problem Archive