What's new

NEW 5/20/2013: Keynes on Laissez-Faire [More...]

Gavin Kennedy writes: "‘Laissez-nous faire’ is not advocated as a universal principle for merchants and their customers; it was a very partial principle for merchants only... [Mill and mine owners] wrapped themselves in laissez-faire flags to wipe up the blood of their employees when they demanded their own freedoms and not those of their labourers or their customers." [more...]

NEW 5/19/2013: Self-interest vs. Greed and the Limitations of the Invisible Hand [More...]

"In order for greed to contribute to the economy positively, it is necessary not only to have rule of law but to have an ideal system of laws and enforcement. Given imperfections and uncertainties in the legal system, economic value and general well-being would be greater without greed." [more...]

NEW 5/19/2013: Greed Is Good

Libertarians like to think their greed is good, but think labor unionists are greedy and thus bad. Greed is different than desire for wealth: it is desire for wealth without enough regard for whether others are harmed. [more...]

NEW 5/17/2013: What about Marx? [More...]

Daniel Little examines a number of key theoretical frameworks that Marx advocated that still successfully challenge economic liberalism or capitalism. He concludes that there is much still of value, if you avoid the dogmatism of earlier Marxists. [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: Rand Paul Email Touts False Gun Conspiracy About U.N. Treaty That Doesn’t Exist [More...]

Rand Paul shows some of the flakey, paranoid side his father is also famous for. [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: The Tyranny of the Market [More...]

Angus Sibley's outline of the threats from libertarian (free-market) economics. "According to free-market dogma, we must accept passively the dictatorship of the market." [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: Review: Angus Sibley's "The 'Poisoned Spring' of Economic Libertarianism [More...]

Michael Sean Winters provides a good, terse summary in this National Catholic Reporter review. [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: The "Poisoned Spring" of Economic Libertarianism: Menger, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard: A Critique from Catholic Social Teaching of the 'Austrian School' of Economics

Angus Sibley criticizes Austrian economics and resulting libertarianism both from the viewpoint of practical economics and from Catholic teaching. "[...] what neoconservatives call ‘freedom’ has turned out to be the liberty of wealthy capitalists to subvert the political process, to dominate economic decision-making, and generally to take advantage of everyone else." [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Libertarian Cowards Run from Own Words [More...]

"Only when he and his backers find the courage to appeal to Whites as Whites, rather than as individuals, will Ron Paul’s numbers climb into the double digits.” [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Rand Paul the Hypocrite [More...]

"Freedom does not only involve freedom from the government." [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Rand Paul is No Barry Goldwater on Civil Rights

Rand Paul has repeatedly said that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds: private businesses should not be forced to serve African Americans if they so choose. As opposed to Goldwater's supposed Constitutional concerns. [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds

Classic ideological one-sided story telling, to make the EPA and other government agencies into villains. Ignore the fact that the "victims" were convicted by juries of crimes. [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: I don’t think the Swiss health care system is what they think it is [More...]

Aaron Carroll corrects notions that Swiss health care is more free-market and less socialized than Obamacare. [more...]

NEW 5/01/2013: Understanding Karl Marx [More...]

Brad DeLong's simple, clear overview of Karl Marx. He points out what has been historically falsified, and what is still of value. He also provides explanations of where Marx was coming from, where his mistakes originated, and why. [more...]

Common Fallacies Of Economics

Economics has its own styles of common fallacies. These are much loved by both pundits and highly qualified economists making partisan arguments. [more...]

Phlogistonomics

Coined by Matt Yglesias, this refers to explaining what is well known with standard economics, and explaining the remaining unknown part with hand-waving appeals to popular prejudices, usually supporting a right-wing moral argument. [more...]

Efficient Market Hypothesis

A major Chicago Economics hypothesis and precept, produced by Eugene Fama and eventually strongly questioned by him as well. The existence of speculative bubbles refutes all but the weakest forms of the EMH. [more...]

Interview with Justin Fox: The Myth Of The Rational Market

An overview of why markets are neither rational or efficient, and who has been influential in proposing and taking down these ideas. An interview with Justin Fox, author of "The Myth of the Rational Market". [more...]

The US Gov’t as Venture Capitalist: Why Go There? [More...]

Jared Bernstein writes: "The question of should the government backstop investments in new areas of research is actually an odd one, because it’s been doing so since before we were even a nation [...]" [more...]

Things Government Should Do

There are plenty of ideas of what governments should do born out by long history of where governments have been successful and where markets have failed. Not just defense, but things like basic research, infrastructure, social insurance and a host of other practical needs. [more...]

The Failures Of Milton Friedman [More...]

With classic objectivist zeal, Slade Mendenhall is affronted because Milton Friedman criticized fellow libertarians Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. His solution? Criticize Milton Friedman, with extra bonus points for strawmen and misrepresentation. [more...]

Fraudulent Controversial Books

Part of the propaganda program of libertarianism has been a steady flow of books based on fraudulent claims that take months or years to debunk. Some are directly produced or financed by libertarians, others by academics or conservatives are heavily endorsed by libertarians. [more...]

The Bitcoin Bubble and a Bad Hypothesis [More...]

"Bitcoin is perhaps the finest example of a pure bubble. [...] The closest parallel is the fictitious dotcom company imagined in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, whose only product was its own stock." [more...]

Game Theory

Simple game theory such as the Prisoner's Dilemma shows that many situations can be improved by government interference. [more...]

The correct way to argue with Milton Friedman [More...]

[...] listen out for the words “Let us assume” or “Let’s suppose” and immediately jump in and say “No, let’s not assume that”. [more...]

Libertarian Framing

A 24 word statement demonstrates 7 libertarian framing tricks. "Why on earth are you in favor of giving the state any more governmental power than is absolutely unavoidable? It'll just be abused." [more...]

Framing

Framing is a classic rhetorical technique that attempts to sneak in assumptions. Control the assumptions, and you shape the discussion. If your opponent disagrees, he is either distracted from making his own argument to attack the assumptions or he is put on the defensive. The classic framing example is Groucho Marx's "when did you stop beating your wife?". So why are you in favor of coercive government? [more...]

Bibliography on Methodological Individualism [More...]

A critical, extended bibliography. [more...]

The Strange Case of Dr Hayek and Mr Hayek [More...]

An excellent overview of Hayek's life and career, giving good weight to his failures and inconsistencies. There is also a long appendix about the socialist calculation debate. [more...]

Socialist Calculation Debate

A debate about how a socialist economy would be able to allocate resources between goals without resort to capitalism. The debate tends to ignore the fact that Communist and wartime command economies did very well with centralized planning. Not to mention Walmart. [more...]

12 Rules of Goldbuggery [More...]

"Ignore the risks of being a gold bug at great peril to your portfolio..." [more...]

Libertarian And Objectivism Are Both Stolen Terms

Libertarianism has been used by philosophers about free will for 200 years. Libertarian was used by anarchists for roughly 100 years before it was recently co-opted by right-wing American libertarians. Objectivism was used by Gottlob Frege for his philosophical realism decades before Rand's adoption. The Objectivist Poets also used the term before Rand did. [more...]

Freedom in the World [More...]

A respectable index of freedom, and a good alternative to libertarian, neoliberal and corporatist indexes. Produced by Freedom House. Based on 10 political rights questions and 15 civil liberties questions. [more...]

Free, Free at Last [More...]

"An "Economic Freedom Index" that tells us little about economic growth or political freedom is a slipshod measure that would seem to have no other purpose other than to sell the neoliberal policies that stand in the way of most people gaining control over their economic lives and obtaining genuine economic freedom in today's global economy." [more...]

The Questionable Record of Neoliberalism [More...]

"I’ll take a brief look at [...] the US & UK, Chile, Hong Kong & Singapore, and Scandinavia. I believe that in none of these instances do we get a clear example of neoliberal policies succeeding economically." [more...]

Bitcoin is ludicrous, but it tells us something important about the nature of money [More...]

Bitcoin's inelasticity of supply means it would have the same macroeconomic problems as gold, causing deflation. [more...]

Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin [More...]

"[...] people think it’s smart, nay cutting-edge, to create a sort of virtual currency whose creation requires wasting real resources in a way Adam Smith considered foolish and outmoded in 1776." [more...]

Why should anyone have to read your goofy holy book? [More...]

If you are arguing against a libertarian position, you don't need to have read "collections of rationalizations, inconsistent and incoherent" to take an opposing position. All you need is to identify where the position is wrong. [more...]

Criticisms of the Non-Libertarian FAQ

Over 20 years, numerous libertarians have criticized A Non-Libertarian FAQ. Their criticisms are surprisingly lame, with rather obvious errors. [more...]

Gish Gallop [More...]

The debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time. [more...]

The Courtier’s Reply [More...]

PZ Meyers' description of how "The Emperor has no clothes!" is defended by sycophants, and why that defense is fallacious. You don't have to be an expert in libertarianism to know it is baseless. [more...]

Libertarian Apologetics

Libertarians have standard techniques for defending their absurd ideas that overlap strongly with the techniques employed by religious believers. [more...]

Libertarian Experiment in Iceland Fails [More...]

"In fact, economists are already using Iceland as a textbook case of how to ruin a nation's economy. As Paul Krugman recently noted, there is an "almost eerie correlation between conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today." " [more...]

Modern Iceland

Iceland's Independence Party made radical reforms inspired by and praised by Milton Friedman. These ended with a spectacular banking crash in 2009. [more...]

Polycentric Law

Non-monopolistic, competing law. We actually already have that, with federal, state, and local law plus commonlaw. Some libertarian academics have made careers describing historical examples. Polycentric Law tends to be supplanted by more centralized law. [more...]

Is Medieval Iceland an example of "anarcho"-capitalism working in practice? [More...]

An anarchist rebuttal: "Ironically, medieval Iceland is a good example of why "anarcho"-capitalism will not work, degenerating into de facto rule by the rich." [more...]

Medieval Iceland

Many libertarians, reading David Friedman's paper on medieval Icelandic institutions, consider them to be an example of how anarcho-capitalism could work. [more...]

Free Banking in Scotland [More...]

Supposed examples of free banking turn out to have other agencies acting as lenders of last resort. [more...]

Free Banking

The idea of replacing central banks by allowing banks to issue their own currencies, with or without various backings. An idea revived by Friedrich von Hayek, with a literature of supposed historical examples. Free banking has many problems. [more...]

There is no such thing as redistribution [More...]

"There is no default distribution. All distributions are the consequence of any number of institutional design choices, none of which are commanded by the fabric of the universe." [more...]

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

Explains the socially constructed nature of "free markets", as opposed to "spontaneous order". A major work of economic history. [more...]

Ten Modes of Individualism-- None of Which Works-- And Their Alternatives [More...]

Individualism comes in at least 10 modes, with flaws and merits for each. It is argued that systemism has all the virtues and none of the defects of individualism and holism. [more...]

Philosophical Individualism

Individualism is merely one viewpoint in an enormous hierarchy of viewpoints ranging from Planck length to the universe. Individualism as a tenet of a philosophy transforms that philosophy into a Procrustean bed that cannot model the real world well, because the real world is not based on individuals. [more...]

Bitcoin is no Great Mystery [More...]

"One wonders why any libertarian would get excited about it (as it turns out, most do not!). [...] Bitcoins are just another speculative activity for those producing and buying them. It is just another type of gold buggery -- except even more ridiculous. [more...]

Hodgson on the Essence of Old Institutional Economics [More...]

The neoclassical idea of basing economics on the individual utility-maximising agent is mistaken. Individuals and their action can be shaped by social and cultural factors and institutions. [more...]

Hodgson on Methodological Individualism [More...]

What is it about complex social relations that invalidates both “methodological individualism” [...] The answer is “emergent properties” [...] [more...]

Rochester Professor Wonders Why Rapists Shouldn’t Be Allowed to ‘Reap the Benefits’ of Passed Out Girls [More...]

Steven Landsburg attempts to compare and contrast potential "psychic harms" associated with pornography, environmentalism, and being raped while you are passed out. [more...]

In which Steven Landsburg utterly flips out [More...]

Noah Smith assings us to read a Steven Landsburg post and assigns us to "think of four reasons why Landburg's post is utter nonsense." [more...]

Just when you thought Libertarians couldn’t get any more revolting [More...]

Steven Landsburg asks if it is OK to rape somebody unconscious, as long as nothing tips off the victim. [more...]

Steven Landsburg

A self-declared libertarian economist whose obliviousness defies belief. [more...]

Capitalism Is Very Productive

With few exceptions, most people agree. But libertarians tend not to see the flip side of the coin that others see: capitalism needs government services and has huge flaws. Capitalism is only one tool, not an ultimate goal. [more...]

Predictions That Never Come True

Medicare will cause the end of freedom! We're on the road to serfdom! The market will end discrimination! Regulation will bankrupt business! Libertarians are loaded with predictions and promises that will never come true, and ignore all the historical evidence they won't come true. [more...]

Private Property Is Not The Only Liberty

Many libertarians root all rights and freedoms in self-ownership and other property rights. The few who recognize other rights consider them trumped by even the slightest association with property. Property uber alles! [more...]

What they really care about [More...]

[...] what they really care about is low taxes, unfettered capitalism and private property. (Also too, guns.) The rest is apparently just window dressing so they don't look like mirthless, right wing drudges. [...] they won't grant that half the population even owns their own bodies or is free to control their own procreation. [more...]

Nozick's Natural Rights And Other Gut Feelings

Any time a natural rights author uses the term rights, you might as well substitute the word fairies. [more...]

The Entitlement Theory of Justice

Like most of Nozick's arguments in Anarchy, State and Utopia, the strength of the Entitlement Theory of Justice is illusory. It suffers critically from a lack of foundations and vulnerability to simple counterexamples. [more...]

Huben on Nozick

Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" can be quickly summarized as a game of hide-the-fallacy. After almost 40 years, it is still easy to identify new fallacies or describe the fallacies more obviously. [more...]

Index of Economic Freedom [More...]

The Heritage Foundation's and Wall Street Journal's annual report: a piece of ideological punditry masquerading as academic research. An international comparison, irrelevant to ordinary people. [more...]

Economic Freedom of the World [More...]

The Cato Institute's and Fraser Institute's annual report that gives a pseudoscientific measure of what the extremely rich and international corporations value. An international comparison, irrelevant to ordinary people. [more...]

Yglesias 2: A Robert Nozick Followup Or; How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Quit Ideal Theory [More...]

[...] I think the reason his remarks on politics were so brief and his argument in favor of his favored position so threadbare is precisely because he didn’t think it was possible to draw many interesting policy conclusions from his philosophical position. [more...]

Yglesias 1: Robert Nozick Was A Smart Man -- Too Smart To Embrace The Doctrine Of Anarchy, State, and Utopia [More...]

The fact that these kind of “harcore” views do such a poor job of withstanding scrutiny that the author of their most academically influential defense backed away from them is something people ought to be aware of. [more...]

Brian Barry on Robert Nozick [More...]

Excerpts from Brian Barry’s amusing review of Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, from 1975. (Political Theory August 1975 3: 331-336) Can you say "spurious intellectual respectability"? [more...]

Praxeology

Ludwig von Mises' anti-scientific, axiomatic, a priori methodology for supporting his preferred conservative political economy. Also used by Murray Rothbard. Ignored by academia, promoted by the crank vanity press Ludwig von Mises Institute. [more...]

Human Action

(The Scholar's Edition) Ludwig von Mises' enormous rant in favor of the pseudoscience of praxeology. A self-study course in convincing yourself you understand economics and all the academic and professional economists are mistaken. [more...]

The Turing Test: Who Can Successfully Explain Robert Nozick? [More...]

Brad DeLong provides a succinct explanation of the major reason why nobody should take Robert Nozick seriously. This is ridicule done right. [more...]

Electronic Frontier Foundation [More...]

Defending consumer rights in the digital world against corporate and industry attempts to profit by lawmaking to limit how we use products. A very dynamic organization as watchdog, muckraker, researcher, sponsor of bills and amicus in legal cases. [more...]

Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer? [More...]

"[...] there is room for considerable discussion of the most appropriate ways to subsidize innovation[...] None of the questions about "intellectual property" can be answered yelling "it's my property." [more...]

Intellectual Property Reform

Many others besides libertarians propose reform or abolition of intellectual property. Libertarians oppose it ideologically because it is obviously a government creation, but many others pragmatically question whether it actually advances the useful arts. [more...]

Academic Resources

Periodically, libertarians claim many criticisms are not of good quality. While there is no guarantee of quality (nor perfection) for academic publications, they do at least tend to be better documented and better argued. [more...]

Why libertarians apologize for autocracy [More...]

Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, the Cato Institute and Hans-Hermann Hoppe all have expressed preferences for autocratic rule instead of democratic rule. [more...]

Dictators And Other Anti-Democratic Authoritarians

A large number of notable libertarians have supported dictators and other anti-democratic authoritarians, primarily because they support big-business over the interests of ordinary people. [more...]

The Libertarian Map of Freedom [More...]

Corey Robin points out a few of the howlers in the Mercatus Center's “Freedom in the 50 States.” "Libertarian freedom: no abortion, everyone in jail, and the lights are on all the time. Free at last, free at last." [more...]

Libertarian Indexes Of Freedom

Over the years, many libertarian think-tanks and other Koch-funded organizations have created indexes of freedom that invariably represent the interests of large multinational corporations and the rich while ignoring the interests of ordinary people. This is obviously opposed to democratic ideas of political freedom. The entries in this index are evidence, not criticism. [more...]

Freedom in the 50 States [More...]

Classic pseudoscientific propaganda aimed at freedom of business from the democratic desires of real people. From the Mercatus Center. [more...]

Mises on Mixed Economies and Socialism: He is Incoherent [More...]

"On this subject, Mises was an ignorant and muddle-headed idiot, and it is not surprising that after 1945 he was ignored by serious economists." [more...]

Liberapedia: Libertarianism [More...]

A liberal community's analysis of libertarianism. [more...]

RationalWiki: Libertarianism [More...]

The skeptical community's analysis of libertarianism. [more...]

Mises and Hayek Dehomogenized?: A Note on a Schism in Modern Austrian Economics [More...]

Some fratricidal minutiae of Austrian economics. "Both Misesians and Hayekians live in a fantasy world, with respect to the price system." You can skip the technical parts to appreciate the fanaticism of both sides. [more...]

The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult [More...]

Murray Rothbard's scathing description of 1972 Objectivism as a cult. "Thus, power not liberty or reason, was the central thrust of the Randian movement." Excellent reporting. [more...]

Detroit's Libertarian Belle Isle Plan: Basically Gayer Fire Island With Lower Taxes [More...]

"... the endless passages of stilted dialogue about half-baked libertarian theory got boring, all and all, “Belle Isle: Detroit’s Game Changer” is the best homoerotic vanity press propaganda novel written by a senior housing developer yr Wonket has ever read." [more...]

Hell Isle [More...]

Rodney Lockwood wants to convert 982-acre Belle Isle park in Detroit into an independent nation, selling citizenships at $300,000 per. [more...]

Libertarian Mugged by Reality [More...]

Alex Beinstein, a U. of Chicago student, gets a job and loses his libertarianism. [more...]

The Classical Gold Standard Era was a Myth [More...]

"In reality, credit money (mostly unbacked by metal) was the predominant form of money through the entire period of the Classical Gold Standard." [more...]

Market Failure

Real world economies are rife with market failure. This means choosing between second-best options, such as imperfect markets, NGO's and government solutions. Ideology and economic theory cannot say which is best: you must resort to experimentation and history. [more...]

Shrugging off Atlas [More...]

Brad DeLong identifies Nicholas Eberstadt's big lie on the second page of "A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic". A scary "9.5 percent per annum for fifty straight years" is actually 1.2 percent. [more...]

What Do Econ 101 Students Need To Remember Second Most From The Course? [More...]

Brad DeLong lists 7 assumptions necessary to "market efficiency", and describes the frequent failures of these assumptions. "A great government will have foresight and take care to structure political-economic institutions to make these seven arenas of myopia and market failure as small as possible." [more...]

Arindrajit Dube's Testimony on the Minimum Wage to the U.S. Senate [More...]

Has a one page executive summary that notes the key points on inequality, employment, turnover and frictions, prices, poverty, and complementarity with EITC. [more...]

The end of laissez-faire [More...]

John Maynard Keynes points out that laissez faire is based on false assumptions, and that there are many necessary social undertakings. [more...]

There are Democrats who'd like answers on assassinations too [More...]

Sensible people are not distracted by drones. Digby says: It's about whether the president has the constitutional or statutory authority to carry out a covert assassination program against American citizens on the new "global battlefield." [more...]

Keynsianism

Libertarians reflexively oppose Keynesian macroeconomic ideas because they give an important role to government, instead of relying on laissez-faire. The Great Depression and the Great Recession both illustrate the superiority of Keynsianism [more...]

The American corporation and the centrally planned economies of the soviet empire [More...]

"My own prejudice is that today's corporations struggle mightily with the same challenges that brought down the planned economies of the Soviet era, and that they succeed more from their impressive ability to hold critical resources and to eliminate weaker competition, than through a unique gift for channeling and distributing resources." [more...]

Central Planning

Libertarians associate central planning with their worst bugaboos: Communism, Socialism, and the State. But Corporations are notorious for their central planning: all of Walmart is run through central planning. When market failures are overwhelming (as in health care), history shows central planning is much more effective. [more...]

Category Archives: new deal denialist truth squadding [More...]

Eric Rauchway's "The Edge Of The American West" articles on New Deal denialism. [more...]

Franklin Delano Obama? [More...]

"Now, there’s a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it’s important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts." [more...]

With Tyler against the strawmen and conservatives. [More...]

Eric Rauchway points out Tyler Cowen's subtle insertion of unspoken claims about the New Deal. When did you stop beating your wife, Tyler? [more...]

New Deal Denialism [More...]

Amity Shlaes (in The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression) and others attempt to discredit FDR's successful and popular polices for relief, recovery and reform by cherry-picking and misinterpreting data. [more...]

The New Deal

Libertarians cannot explain the successes of FDR's New Deal. Hence, they engage in ridiculous denialism about how effective it was. [more...]

Historical Revisionism

The facts of history do not support libertarianism. This spawns an industry supplying libertarians with false history that supports their beliefs. [more...]

The Artistic Superstructure of the Epoch of Labor Unionism and Socialization: Ludwig von Mises on the Detective Story [More...]

Ludwig von Mises comically sees detective fiction as an essentially leftist literary genre crafted to undermine capitalism. [more...]

Dependents of the State [More...]

"We are all dependents of the state, not just the poor, and it’s certainly not the poor who benefit most from their dependence. [...] Just about every aspect of America’s economic and legal infrastructure [...] allows the rich to stay rich and get richer." [more...]

State Support Of The Wealthy

Supposed "makers" benefit much more from the state than the remainder of the populace. This is especially clear from historical and international comparisons. [more...]

Cognitive Democracy

"[...] democracy has unique benefits as a form of collective problem solving in that it potentially allows people with highly diverse perspectives to come together in order collectively to solve problems. Democracy can do this better than either markets and hierarchies, because it brings these diverse perceptions into direct contact with each other, allowing forms of learning that are unlikely either through the price mechanism of markets or the hierarchical arrangements of bureaucracy. Furthermore, democracy can, by experimenting, take advantage of novel forms of collective cognition that are facilitated by new media." [more...]

Pareto at Melos [More...]

The first fundamental theorem of welfare economics relies on false premises, and thus doesn't say anything about the virtues of actually-existing markets. But worse, the same optimality claims can be made on behalf of the most morally objectionable way of allocating resources, naked coercion. [more...]

It Ain't the State [More...]

Gene Callahan points out that rates of killing are much higher in stateless societies. Excellent discussion in comments. [more...]

MarketThink

MarketThink is a term coined by Tom Slee for the ideology of markets as ideal solutions for all problems. The first corollary is that problems markets cannot solve are ignored, dismissed, or considered unimportant. The second corollary is that government and other social choice opposes the benefits of markets. [more...]

Public Goods

Libertarians often refuse to recognize public goods or that governments have a role in public good provision. The list of important goods with substantial public goods components is very long, and includes education, law, safety, health, transportation, research and much more. [more...]

Varieties of Error [More...]

Paul Krugman points out that Austrian models incorrectly predicted hyperinflation, but that Austrian economists have not shown any evidence of admitting their errors or rethinking their models. [more...]

No One Makes You Shop At Wall Mart: The Surprising Deceptions Of Individual Choice

Tom Slee's easy to read game-theoretic description of how MarketThink, the dogma of individual choice, does not lead to optimal outcomes. [more...]

Confessions of an ex-libertarian [More...]

When Koen Deconinck's extended study of Austrian Economics found it was unconvincing, doubts about the rest of libertarianism rapidly followed. [more...]

Testimonials By Former Libertarians And Objectivists

Let's see what we can learn from some of the many who have left libertarianism. [more...]

Tax Flight Is a Myth: Higher State Taxes Bring More Revenue, Not More Migration [More...]

Raising taxes does not drive out the wealthy, despite well-publicized celebrity stories and frequent threats from wealthy businessmen. [more...]

Early Childhood: the Nub of the Problem [More...]

David Warsh directs us to James Heckman for the best research on the importance and cost effectiveness of early childhood interventions through quality pre-K programs. Despite decades of libertarian criticism, some of these programs have been shown to have high benefit-cost ratios and rates of return. Read all 15 points. [more...]

Soaring Systems: High Flyers All Have Equitable Funding, Shared Curriculum, and Quality Teaching [More...]

Developed nations around the world fund education centrally and equally. [more...]

Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment? [More...]

"The employment effect of the minimum wage is one of the most studied topics in all of economics. [...] The weight of that evidence points to little or no employment response to modest increases in the minimum wage." [more...]

Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaires [More...]

"A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene." [more...]

The Tea Party

The Koch brothers' successor to the Libertarian Party: an attempt to usurp the Republican Party with fake grassroots. [more...]

The Big Speech Of The Week [More...]

Charlie Pierce discusses presidential strategy in pre-empting Republican plans to undermine changes. [more...]

Ron Paul Calls on United Nations to Confiscate Domain Names of His Supporters [More...]

Ron Paul filed an international UDRP complaint against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org with WIPO, a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations. The complaint calls on the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Ron Paul. [more...]

Once more into the breach of self-ownership: Reply to Narveson and Brenkert [More...]

G. A. Cohen shreds Jan Narveson's arguments about self-ownership, defending his own arguments in Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. [more...]

Private Property, Coercion, and the Impossibility of Libertarianism [More...]

Christopher Schimke's Masters thesis criticizing Jan Narveson's libertarianism. It concludes: "even Narvesonian libertarianism endorses pervasive initiations of force against individuals." [more...]

Jan Narveson

An anarchocapitalist libertarian professor of philosophy emeritus. Author of The Libertarian Idea. [more...]

Rand Paul

A libertarian (and Tea Party) Republican Senator, son of Ron Paul. He was burnt when he gave his real feelings on the Civil Rights Act, and now is attempting to be a normal slimy politician. [more...]

Harvard Injury Control Research Center [More...]

A great resource on the public health viewpoint for reducing injury. The Firearms Research section has pointers to a great many recent resources and debunks much propaganda. [more...]

Disability

Libertarians have no solution to problems of disability: people who (often through no fault of their own) have physical or mental differences or impairments due to genetics, accident, age, etc. They sweep the problems under the rug, claiming that family and private charity are sufficient when all of history shows they are not. [more...]

Contract Feudalism [More...]

Contract Feudalism describes the increasing power of employers over employee's lives outside the workplace. [more...]

The United what of America?

Julian Assange points out that some corporations rival nation-states in size. Then he compares their systems of governments, pointing out that corporations have civic freedoms comparable to those of the 1960's Soviets. [more...]

Let It Bleed: Libertarianism and the Workplace [More...]

"What makes the private sector, especially the workplace, such an attractive instrument of repression is precisely that it can administer punishments without being subject to the constraints of the Bill of Rights. It is an archipelago of private governments, in which employers are free to do precisely what the state is forbidden to do: punish without process. " [more...]

The Workplace

Our greatest daily loss of liberty is in the workplace. Libertarian pretense that the workplace is voluntary would only make sense if people had an equal alternative to the workplace. Power differences between employer and employee result in many losses of liberty. [more...]

The End of Low Hanging Fruit? [More...]

The authors point out that Tyler Cowen ignores the importance of incentives to innovation, which come from inclusive (not extractive) institutions. [more...]

How to win arguments by pretending to be a simpleton [More...]

Noah Smith explains why Hans Hermann-Hoppe's method of criticizing Paul Krugman is really just trolling. And how HHH could really know better just by reading one or two papers. [more...]

How To Debate Paul Krugman [More...]

Numerous anti-Krugman arguments are eviscerated [more...]

Steven Pressman on Public Choice Theory [More...]

Seven fundamental problems with public choice theory that make it look like a ridiculous exercise. [more...]

Public Choice Theory

A school that starts with anti-government and pro-market ideology to find that government cannot work and markets do. Surprise! [more...]

The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery [More...]

18th century state militias were primarily slave patrols. Southerners (including many of the founding fathers) feared northerners might not allow their state militias to enforce slavery. [more...]

The Origins of Neoliberalism, Part III – Europe and the Centre-Left Fall under Hayek’s Spell [More...]

How Europe adopted a somewhat different version of neoliberalism. [more...]

The Origins of Neoliberalism, Part II – The Americanisation of Hayek’s Delusion [More...]

How Friedrich Hayek recruited bankrollers through the Mount Pelerin Society, and eventually brought about an Americanized Road To Serfdom: Capitalism And Freedom by Milton Friedman. [more...]

The Origins of Neoliberalism, Part I – Hayek’s Delusion [More...]

How Hayek ignored the fact that the conservative policies he endorsed led to Hitler, and how he created a fantasy history where he was exculpated and the blame lay on liberals. [more...]

The Origins of Neoliberalism

A three part series by Philip Pilkington which attributes the rise of neoliberalism to Friedrich Hayek, drawing heavily on The Road To Mount Pelerin. How Hayek changed from an economist to a successful propagandist. [more...]

Infamous Libertarian Research

Much controversial social research by libertarians is quickly debunked by critics. Names such as John Lott, John Stossell, Tyler Cowen and Charles Murray publish "research" that is so blatantly wrong that, after a brief fashion among their followers, not even libertarians take them seriously. [more...]

The Simple Truth About Gun Control [More...]

Gun control works, around the world. It is not a panacea, but just making access to weapons more difficult greatly reduces the numbers of homicides, suicides and accidents. [more...]

So You ThinkYou Know The Second Amendment? [More...]

Interpretations of the Second Amendment as an individual right are recent, political, not comprehensive and likely to change. [more...]

The God That Sucked [More...]

The results of roughly 30 years of market worship are a destruction of the American dream. [more...]

Capitalism, Markets and Laissez-Faire

Libertarian ideology worships these gods with feet of clay, and wishes no limits to them. History and common sense tell us that limits must be imposed on them, they must be regulated. [more...]

Elinor Ostrom on the Commons [More...]

How real-world solutions to the "tragedy of the commons" work without privatization. An easy, brief introduction. [more...]

Local Commons

Elinor Ostrom's real-world observed solutions to regulating commons without government or private ownership. [more...]

‘Free Market’ Double Standards 6.0 [More...]

The sixth hilarious collection of examples of self-contradiction by free marketeers. [more...]

Guns

Libertarians generally endorse unregulated private ownership of guns and other armaments, no matter how absurd. [more...]

NRA and other gun extremists

Libertarians usually endorse NRA positions or even more extreme positions on private ownership of armaments. The NRA has created an absolutist atmosphere extremely hostile to reasoned discussion of (or research on) benefits and harms of guns. [more...]

Propaganda Mills

The Koch brothers and other right-wing funders seldom produce their own propaganda: instead they encourage the development of independent, competitive propaganda mills as a means of reducing the costs of propaganda development. [more...]

EconStories.tv

As the name says, they specialize in fictional stories about economics, starting with opposition to Keynesianism. Witty and well-produced, but extremely misleading propaganda in favor of the economics preferred by the Koch brothers. [more...]

Leaving Libertarianism

A series of suggestions for how to start undoing libertarian programming. [more...]

The Short, Simple Dismissal Of Libertarianism

99% of libertarianism is obviously untrue or unacceptible. [more...]

Lavatory and Liberty: The Secret History of the Bathroom Break [More...]

"Many workers in the United States aren’t able to exercise their right to pee on the job -- due to lack of government enforcement -- and it wasn’t until 1998 (!) that they even got that right, thanks to the federal government." [more...]

Women's Issues

Women's issues (and feminism) are largely ignored by libertarianism, which is overwhelmingly male. In part inherited from early liberalism which assumed male heads of household represented the whole family both politically and economically. No libertarians have really grown past this to address women's issues as strongly as they address the issues of big business. [more...]

The American Social Contract: A Promise to Fulfill [More...]

A history of the US social contract from the 18th century to the 21st. Details five elements of economic opportunity comprising the social contract: economic liberty, economic access, economic adequacy, economic ability and economic security. [more...]

Huben on Social Contract

Libertarians misrepresent social contracts as they actually exist, referring instead to philosophical models. [more...]

No Discount: Comparing the Public Option to the Coupon Welfare State [More...]

A study of the advantages and disadvantages of vouchers, as opposed to direct public provision. "Vouchers take citizens democratically finding solutions to problems and turn them into consumers bidding on goods in a market. Finding solutions in a public space emphasizes accountability, voice, transparency, rules and claims through reasoning that goes beyond the self. The private market emphasizes cost-benefit thinking, exit, closed proprietary profit-seeking strategies, bargaining and the satiation of individual wants." [more...]

Vouchers

Libertarians claim to prefer vouchers to direct government provision. But they do so for ideological reasons, not because vouchers are the best method. Some voucher programs (such as food stamps) work well, but direct provision works better for many other goods. [more...]

Market Power

In a market exchange, there is producer surplus and consumer surplus. Market power is when producers can raise prices above the marginal costs to capture more of the surplus. Usually through monopoly or oligopoly. [more...]

International Comparisons That Favor Socialism

All the world consists of mixed economies, and those that are more socialist than the US tend to do better in health care, equality, social mobility and a host of other factors. [more...]

Mixed Economy

Existing markets are important parts of our mixed economies. The most socialist or communist economies in the world still use mixed markets, though they are more weighted towards central direction. Likewise the most capitalist economies, still weighted towards central direction within corporations. [more...]

I Pencil: A product of the mixed economy [More...]

John Quiggan unpacks the propaganda from Leonard Read's I Pencil. Pencils are products of the mixed economy, not of mythical free markets. [more...]

Libertarians understand economics: others have false understanding if they are not outright ignorant.

A classic case of psychological projection. Libertarians believe in all sorts of fringe economics (such as Austrian Economics) in addition to the most appalling errors of mainstream Chicago Economics. [more...]

EconoTrolls: An Illustrated Bestiary [More...]

An Illustrated Bestiary of the Econ Blogworld, helping you to identify libertarians, Austrians, Republicans, and a host of other creatures you will encounter in economics blogs. [more...]

Democracy

Representative democracy with division of powers is the other enlightenment theory (besides markets) that has created today's world. Libertarians often view it as opposing markets, and grossly misrepresent it. [more...]

Civil Rights

The civil rights movement has been one of their great bugaboos: it is a classic example of non-market application of government to relieve widespread oppression. [more...]

Does Nozick Have a Theory of Property Rights? [More...]

Barbara Fried points out numerous ways Robert Nozick abandons libertarian principles and resorts to utilitarianism in Anarchy, State and Utopia. Free download. [more...]

Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty

Market anarchists (left libertarians) believe in free markets, not in capitalism. They wish to have markets free of both government and capitalism. [more...]

Methodological individualism today [More...]

"In my view, the only claims about methodological individualism that seem unequivocally plausible today are the ontological requirements -- the various formulations of the notion that social things are composed of the actions and thoughts of individuals and nothing else... As pragmatist sociologists are now arguing, there are compelling theories of the actor that do not privilege the model of conscious deliberative choice." [more...]

Methodological Individualism (propaganda)

A greedy reductionist (in the words of Daniel Dennett) attempt to oppose "collectivist" theories with theories of atomistic individuals. But individuals always exist and are entwined within societies. [more...]

Law

Libertarians want laws and interpretations of laws that favor their own interests. They have invested in authoring and sponsoring laws. They have their ridiculous own schools of legal and Constitutional interpretation, and they sponsor training for law students and judges. [more...]

A Process of Denial: Bork and Post-Modern Conservatism [More...]

James Boyle performs a thorough demolition of Robert Bork and his preferred "original intent" method of interpretation of the US Constitution. [more...]

Original Intent And The Constitution.

This is the beginning of a page on the problems with ideas of "Original Intent" of the founders, a conservative propaganda ploy much favored by libertarians. [more...]

Mechanism, Not Policy: Creation Of The Second Invisible Hand

Libertarians and their right wing ilk read far too much into the Constitution. It was not meant to spell out many specifics: but rather to provide a mechanism for reigning in law. [more...]

Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory [More...]

Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen rejects the simple egoism of economic man, as well as universal moral systems, and points out that "Groups intermediate between oneself and all, such as class and community, provide the focus of many actions involving commitment." [more...]

Amartya Sen's commitments [More...]

A recent post examined the Akerlof and Kranton formalization of identity within a rational choice framework. It is worth considering how this approach compares with Amartya Sen's arguments about "commitments" in "Rational Fools". [more...]

Value-free economics? [More...]

Vivian Walsh and Hilary Putnam's The End of Value-Free Economics points out that the attempt to draw a sharp line between "fact" and "value" turns out to be impossible. Including in economics. That means bringing in orienting human values at the foundations. [more...]

Create Fake Intellectual Authority

Libertarian alternative "authority" from think tanks, academic soft sciences, publications, institutions, etc. creates quotable resources for libertarian positions. No thinking required by the user and generally of little or no worth. Heavily financed by wealthy sources. The same strategy creationists use. [more...]

How Libertarian Ideas And Attitudes Are Spread

The spread of libertarianism is not due to some "truth" or intrinsic goodness. Libertarianism would have stayed a fringe belief were it not for enormous public relations programs financed for generations by the extremely wealthy. [more...]

Denialism

A public relations stratagem by which people with no data and no facts can create controversy and confusion about topics on which there is a broad consensus. Topics such as tobacco causing cancer, asbestos causing cancer, global warming and evolution. [more...]

Medicaid on the Ballot [More...]

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Cato Institute Helpfully Makes Its Fake Climate Report Look Like Actual Government Climate Report, Except Fake [More...]

Classic libertarian public relations propaganda about climate change. [more...]

Dictatorship Of The Masses

A putdown of democracy that pretends that modern governments are not constitutional representative democracies. And ignores the fact that modern democratic governments do not act like governments run by dictators. [more...]

Doesn't neo-liberalism in Chile prove that the free market benefits everyone? [More...]

"[...] "economic liberty" has not produced genuine "political liberty" as Friedman (and others) claim. Ultimately, for all but the tiny elite at the top, the Pinochet regime of "economic liberty" was a nightmare." Part of An Anarchist FAQ. [more...]

Less Prominant Libertarians....

Slightly less to greatly less well known. Certainly not needing to be on the main page. [more...]

Greg Ransom, self-appointed high priest of Hayek, gets smacked down as a troll in Crooked Timber. [More...]

Greg Ransom apparently watches for new Hayek mentions on blogs, and generally claims they all misrepresent Hayek. Except the ones he sides with. [more...]

Obama and the Road Ahead: The Rolling Stone Interview [More...]

Obama's ideas for a second term. [more...]

America the Possible: A Manifesto [More...]

James Speth provides a two-part overview of his book, a progressive vision of the USA. He details the problems, their causes, the transformations need to solve them, and the values needed to achieve those solutions. [more...]

America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy

A progressive vision of how the USA has gone wrong and how to simply repair the economic inequality, plutocracy and corporatocracy that are the real cause of so many problems. [more...]

Our Daughter Isn't A Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn't Read Atlas Shrugged [More...]

An excellent satire on what Objectivist child-rearing might be like, if any Objectivists could be socialized enough to actually bear children. [more...]