Liberty Fund

Eric Topol on Deep Medicine

Cardiologist and author Eric Topol talks about his book Deep Medicine with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Topol argues that doctors spend too little face-to-face time with patients, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning is a chance to emphasize the human side of medicine and to expand the power of human connection in […]

Judicial Checks and Moral Hazard

We are settling into a lasting pattern of both parties in Congress assuming it is the courts’ job, not their own, to protect their institutional power.

Mises on how the "boon" of a tariff privilege is soon dissipated (1949)

"Three Agreements of the People" (1647-49) (John Lilburne)

The Best of the OLL No. 72: “Three Agreements of the People” (1647-49) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2016).

A Chicken Game Between Two Governments, by Pierre Lemieux

If President Trump called off an Iranian attack in order to save innocent civilians, he deserves praise. Render to God what is God’s, and to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But, as a Wall Street Journal editorial emphasized, there is something off in this story (“Iran Calls Trump’s Bluff,” June 21, 2019):

It’s important to understand how extraordinary this is. The Commander in Chief ordered ships and planes into battle but recalled them because he hadn’t asked in advance what the damage and casualties might be? While the planes were in the air, he asked, oh, by the way? This is hard to take at face value. …

More likely, he changed his mind because he had second thoughts about the military and political consequences of engaging in a conflict he promised as a candidate to avoid.

Strategic threats have long been modeled with the help of game theory. A classic is economist Thomas Schelling’s 1960 book, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard University Press). In game-theoretic terms, if you play a chicken game without having credibly committed to staying in the middle of the road, expect to lose one way or another: the other player is likely not to swerve; and you will have to swerve yourself, or else a crash will occur.

Policy Relevance and the Professoriate

Policy-makers must deal with the realities of coalition-building and pleasing one’s constituency, realities that academics may not fully grasp.

St. John, private property, and the Parable of the Wolf and the Good Shepherd (2ndC AD)

The Theory of Moral Sentiments: Part II, Section III, Chapter III

Of the final cause of this Irregularity of Sentiments

Alan Reynolds on the Disappearing Middle Class, by David Henderson

At this link is a 22-minute talk that economist Alan Reynolds gave at Harvard in 1987. The other participants were John Kenneth Galbraith, Barry Bluestone, Lester Thurow, and Frank Levy.

There is so much content in this one short talk that it impossible to summarize without losing a lot of content. It’s also funny and you can see that many people in his audience seemed to enjoy it too.

The topic is “The Disappearing Middle Class.”

Notice at about the 5:30 point, Lester Thurow seems to enjoy one of Alan’s zingers.

Great pithy line at the 19:43 point to 19:55

Art of the Levellers

In the course of putting together a multi-volume collection of over 240 Leveller Tracts I came across some very interesting title pages which used typography and occasionally woodcuts to add graphical force to the political and economic arguments being made by the authors. The pamphlets were published in their thousands during the 1640s and 1650s - the London bookseller George Thomason collected 23,000 of them over a period of twenty years and these comprise a major collection which is held by the British Library.

David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-revolution (Laurence L. Bongie)

Though usually Edmund Burke is identified as the first to articulate the principles of a modern conservative political tradition, arguably he was preceded by a Scotsman who is better known for espousing a brilliant concept of skepticism. As Laurence Bongie notes, “David Hume was undoubtedly the eighteenth-century British writer whose works were most widely known and acclaimed on the Continent during the later Enlightenment period. Hume’s impact [in France] was of undeniable importance, greater even for a time than the related influence of Burke, although it represents a contribution to French counter-revolutionary thought which, unlike that of Burke, has been almost totally ignored by historians to this day.” The bulk of Bongie’s work consists of the writings of French readers of Hume who were confronted, first, by the ideology of human perfection and, finally, by the actual terrors of the French Revolution. Offered in French in the original edition of David Hume published by Oxford University Press in 1965, these vitally important writings have been translated by the author into English for the Liberty Fund second edition. In his foreword, Donald Livingston observes that “If conservatism is taken to be an intellectual critique of the first attempt at modern total revolution, then the first such event was not the French but the Puritan revolution, and the first systematic critique of this sort of act was given by Hume.”

James Mackintosh on the relationship between justice and utility (1791)

Measure for Measure (William Shakespeare)

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (The Oxford Shakespeare), ed. with a glossary by W.J. Craig M.A. (Oxford University Press, 1916).

Summer Reading Choices from L&L Writers

Vacation fun for bibliophiles.

On War, vol. 1 (Carl von Clausewitz)

On War, trans. Col. J.J. Graham. New and Revised edition with Introduction and Notes by Col. F.N. Maude, in Three Volumes (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & C., 1918). Vol. 1.

Letters on the Factory Act (Nassau William Senior)

Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the Cotton Manufacture (London: B. Fellowes, 1837).

David M. Hart, "Reassessing Bastiat's *Economic Harmonies* after 160 Years" (May, 2019)

With the completion of a draft of Liberty Fund's new translation of Frédéric Bastiat's economic treatise on Economic Harmonies we have invited a group of scholars who know Bastiat and his work to reassess his contributions to economic theory some 160 years after the book's first appearance in 1850-51. Bastiat is widely known for his brilliant economic journalism (the series of Economic Harmonies) but less so for his contributions to economic theory. As an economic theorist, Bastiat has suffered from being misunderstood (even by his colleagues and contemporaries), neglected and forgotten (by most economists since his death), being subjected to abusive or dismissive criticism (Marx and Schumpeter), and being damned with faint praise (Hayek). David Hart, the Academic Editor of Liberty Fund's Bastiat translation project, argues that out of a list of 18 or so key economic ideas Bastiat can be said to have made significant contributions to 11 of them, and so must be considered a serious economic theorist. He is joined in the discussion by Donald J. Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University; Jörg Guido Hülsmann, professor of economics at the University of Angers in France; and Joseph T. Salerno, academic vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and professor emeritus of economics in the Lubin School of Business of Pace University in New York City.

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