Journalist.
The Search for an Echo by Leonard E. Read is possibly my favorite article he’s ever written; unfortunately, no electronic form exists. I found the article in Essays on Liberty, Volume VI, a FEE series where they collected essays published over the course of a year (in The Freeman, pamphlets and other publications) and republished them …
Continue reading “The search for an echo by Leonard E. Read”
With my column for The Post ending soon with the quarter, I wanted to aggregate all of them for future reference. Market must be free of government General Electric, the largest corporation in America, paid no taxes for 2010. According to a recent New York Times article, General Electric claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. …
Not much original content in this post, but some thins I found to be intellectually advantageous. Deflation, as it is commonly understood, is a confusing concept. The majority of economic thinking presumes it to be universally negative and encourages government action to avert deflation at all costs. However, some economists have noted two distinct forms …
Continue reading “Deflation, Rothbard’s critique of Friedman”
I’ll have Socialist Cliché #3 written in a few days, God willing. In the meantime, here is a fantastic lecture by Leonard Read.
This cliché often, but not always, precedes an ad hominem along the lines of the defender of individual liberty being selfish, greedy, callous or worse. However, it fails because of a few assumptions and misunderstandings: it exalts an illusion of security above liberty, presumes individuals cannot save or monitor their financial situations and accuses libertarians …
I’ve decided to embark on a new project, inspired by a book published by FEE in 1970. As a way to confront economic myths and flimsy political arguments encouraging limits to individual liberty, FEE published a book which addresses 76 “clichés of socialism,” in an effort to help liberty advocates answer these claims. In that …
Continue reading “Cliché of Socialism #1: The greater complexity, the greater government control”
Subsidies slow green energy growth Advocates for green energy investment gloss over a few important points: Job creation is not synonymous with wealth creation, government investment is another form of corporate welfare and government investment is usually, if not always, inefficient. I love the false dichotomy of vote or do nothing. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding …
I’ve lagged on original commentary and writing, I’ll correct that soon. In the meantime, links! Who’s the extremist? And so it goes. The Democratic mayor of Washington, Vincent Gray, called on citizens to “fight back against oppression.” What oppression, you ask? Riders to the 2011 federal budget would end taxpayer funding for abortions and allow …
Peter Thiel on alternatives to the higher education bubble Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they …
…during World War I, as illustrated by Schenck v. United States (1919) . Charles Schenck, the secretary of the Socialist Party of America, was responsible for the distribution of a pamphlet advocating opposition to the draft. For such a heinous crime against American military intervention, the Supreme Court upheld Schenck’s conviction under the Espionage Act …