Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Libertarian David Henderson on Trump

Yesterday, David Henderson, a libertarian economist associated with Hoover and econlib, had a post at econlib suggesting that Trump has been unfairly accused of fomenting violence.  I was going to stick a link to Henderson’s piece in the comments to my earlier post on the libertarian reaction to storming of the Capitol.  But when I […]

Libertarians and Privacy

by Mike Kimel Libertarians and Privacy Over at EconLog, David Henderson berates a fellow libertarian on the difference between Facebook at the Census. But let’s grant, for the sake of this discussion, that FB is quite contemptuous of privacy and that the Census Bureau is less so. Here’s the difference. Every single person who signs […]

Ron Paul Challenges Liberals – or Maybe Not

Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute has a couple of very interesting articles posted at Naked Capitalism,  Why Ron Paul Challenges Liberals, and the follow-up, Naked Capitalism, “A Home for All Sorts of Bircher Nonsense” These are thought-provoking, in many ways insightful, and […]

Follow up to a Libertarian future

Reader Jazzbumpa suggests taking a look at Yves Smith’s Journey into a Libertarian Future series as part of Mike’s thought experiment on the subject here. A very good read. He also offers one of his own posts on the matter at Retirement Blues Brute economics of slavery. And opines at the end of his e-mail […]

A Though Experiment: What Would a Perfect Libertarian State Look Like a Hundred Years Later?

byMike Kimel [edited to make authorship clearer] Libertarians come in many flavors, but I think most of them would agree that in an ideal world, the government would be very small and have limited powers – essentially, the government would control national defense and perhaps adjudicate over property rights disputes (i.e., maintain police and/or the […]

The Road to Serfdom!!

Brad DeLong points us to a post from The Nation on early Koch brothers and Hayek The Road to Serfdom!! Yasha Levine and Mark Ames: Charles Koch to Friedrich Hayek: Use Social Security!: [I]n early June 1973, weeks after [Charles] Koch was appointed president of the Institute for Humane Studies. Along with his brothers, Koch […]