Liberty Fund

Is Relativism the Best Constitutional Defense of Free Speech? A Conversation with Hadley Arkes

Hadley Arkes discusses the rights and duties of freedom of speech.

Russ Roberts on the Information Revolution, Politics, Yeats, and Yelling

EconTalk host Russ Roberts does a monologue on how political discourse seems to have deteriorated in recent years and the growth in outrage, tribalism, and intolerance for those with different views from one’s own. Roberts suggests that part of the problem is the revolution of the market for information caused by the internet that allows people to customize what they see to fit their own political narratives and worldview. In short, the market for news works to make us feel good rather than to help us to discover the truth. The monologue closes with some suggestions for how we might improve the way we consume information and interact with those we disagree with.

Escape from Europe: a calculus of consent model of the origins of liberal institutions in the North American colonies

VLAD TARKO, KYLE O’DONNELL CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY Abstract: The migration out of Europe and the establishment of North American colonies presents us with a great puzzle: why did the colonists establish democratic forms of governance? Considering that early democratic colonies appeared even before philosophical works such as those of Locke and Montesquieu were written, it is […]

FOMC’s Staff Is Wrong or Sloppy, by Pierre Lemieux

The great Don Boudreaux of George Mason University drew my attention to the Minutes of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee of June 12-13, in which the “Staff Review of the Economic Situation” contains the following lines (on page 4):

Net exports made a negligible contribution to real GDP growth in the first quarter, with growth of both real exports and real imports slowing from the brisk pace of the fourth quarter of last year. After narrowing in March, the nominal trade deficit narrowed further in April, as exports continued to increase while imports declined slightly, which suggested that net exports might add modestly to real GDP growth in the second quarter.

This is telling us that “net exports” (exports minus imports) bring a positive “contribution” to GDP growth when they increase (as they did in the first quarter of 2018), and a negative contribution when they decrease. This implies that exports “add” to GDP and that imports subtract from it, which is not true.

The Engaging Mind of Umberto Eco

A final essay collection from the author of The Name of the Rose.

Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay (1917 ed.) (Immanuel Kant)

Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, translated with Introduction and Notes by M. Campbell Smith, with a Preface by L. Latta (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1917).

William Emerson, in his oration to commemorate the Declaration of Independence, reminded his listeners of the "unconquerable sense of liberty" which Americans had (1802)

The Commonwealth of Bees: On the Impossibility of Justice-Through-Ethos

GERALD GAUS SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLICY, Volume 33, Issue 1-2 Abstract: Some understand utopia as an ideal society in which everyone would be thoroughly informed by a moral ethos: all would always act on their pure conscientious judgments about justice, and so it would never be necessary to provide incentives for them to act as […]

The chickens come home to roost, by Scott Sumner

I don’t know anything about roosting chickens, but I do know a bit about trade theory. Over the past 200 years, debates about trade have occurred on two levels. Academics insist that unilateral free trade is the best options. However the “very serious people” (VSP) who conduct real world trade negotiations act as if open markets are a “concession”. They act as if we were doing other countries a favor by letting them export goods to our market. They view the academic perspective as hopelessly idealistic, even as the VSPs have worked hard to gradually move the world toward the same goal of freer trade, one agreement at a time.

Today it looks like the VSPs who believe in globalization made a big mistake, and that the idealistic approach of unilaterally moving toward freer trade was the better strategy. The VSP approach opened the door to protectionist populists, and Donald Trump walked through.  Protectionists are using the “concessions” myth as an excuse to impose higher tariffs. Other countries then face a difficult choice. If they give in to pressure from Trump, it would just encourage him to make even more demands.

Shaftesbury on the need for liberty to promote the liberal arts (1712)

Measurement versus Judgment: On Jerry Muller’s Tyranny of Metrics

We use metrics to assess everything, but measurement does not always equal wisdom.

Proslogium; Monologium; An Appendix in Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo (Saint Anselm)

Proslogium; Monologium; An Appendix in Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo, translated from the latin by Sidney Norton Deane (Chicago: Open Court, 1903).

What Is A Soccer Player Worth?

We might think the high salaries paid to soccer stars are unjust, but the just price requires a philosopher-king, and we know where that thinking leads.

Political Behavior

The fact of scarcity, which exists everywhere, guarantees that people will compete for resources. Markets are one way to organize and channel this competition. Politics is another. People use both markets and politics to get resources allocated to the ends they favor. Even in a democracy, however, political activity is startlingly different from voluntary exchange in markets.

People can accomplish many things in politics that they could not accomplish in the private sector. Some of these are vital to the broader community’s welfare, such as control of health-threatening air pollution from myriad sources affecting millions of individuals or the provision of national defense. Other public-sector actions, such as subsidies to farmers and restrictions on the number of taxicabs in a city, provide narrow benefits that fall far short of their costs.

In democratic politics, rules typically give a majority coalition power over the entire society. These rules replace the rule of willing consent and voluntary exchange that exists in the marketplace. In politics, people’s goals are similar to the goals they have as consumers, producers, and resource suppliers in the private sector, but people participate instead as voters, politicians, bureaucrats, and lobbyists. In the political system, as in the marketplace, people are sometimes (but not always) selfish. In all cases, they are narrow: how much they know and how much they care about other people’s goals is necessarily limited.

Gustave de Molinari argues that political parties are like "actual armies" who are trained to seize power and reward their supporters with jobs and special privileges (1904)

America’s Second Crusade (William Henry Chamberlin)

Chamberlin, a noted American journalist and author, wrote this volume on the role of the United States in World War II just a few years after the surrender of the Axis forces in 1945. This reprint is designed to give history students and scholars a more immediate “window” into both the causes and aftermath of the conflict by focusing on the consequences of World War I, the diplomatic decision that caused the U.S. to enter the conflict and the alliances between Allied forces after the war that led directly to the Atomic Age. A foreword from the author analyzes the historical gap between 1945 and 1950 and expresses caution with the “growing dependence of American foreign policy” on Japan and Germany.

James Gillray on War and Taxes during the War against Napoleon

In this essay we wish to examine 5 prints drawn by James Gillray in the 1790s and 1800s which explore the theme of the suffering of the British people (“John Bull”) under the heavy taxation and national debt which the British government imposed on them while fighting the war against Napoleon.

Ambroise Clément draws the distinction between two different kinds of charity: true voluntary charity and coerced government "charity" which is really a tax (1852)

Get the Story Straight, by Arnold Kling

In Suicide of the West,1 Jonah Goldberg offers an ambitious intellectual defense of modern conservatism. His argument is grounded in a theory of cultural anthropology in which the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves play a crucial role in political economy.  If we tell the right story, we can maintain political order and continue to make economic progress.  But instead the wrong story, told by people he labels Romantics, threatens to undo what he calls “the Miracle,” the progress that took off as a consequence of the Age of Reason.

BOLL 47: Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Of the Individual Man” (1792) (Wilhelm von Humboldt)

The Best of the OLL No. 47: Wilhelm von Humboldt, “Of the Individual Man” (1792) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

China’s Cultural Revolution and the Social Justice Left

At what point will the Left have gone too far?

Does Situationism Threaten Free Will and Moral Responsibility?

MICHAEL MCKENNA & BRANDON WARMKE JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY Abstract: The situationist movement in social psychology has caused a considerable stir in philosophy. Much of this was prompted by the work of Gilbert Harman and John Doris. Both contended that familiar philosophical assumptions about the role of character in the explanation of action were not supported […]

Peter Lewin, "Ludwig Lachmann – Enigmatic and Controversial Austrian Economist" (July. 2018)

This month’s Liberty Matters discusses the work of the Austrian economist Ludwig M. Lachmann (1906 - 1990). All his whole professional life Lachmann considered himself an "Austrian" economist, a soldier dedicated to fostering an appreciation of Austrian insights and to developing those insights beyond the initial contributions of Carl Menger. So Lachmann saw it as his mission to advance among the Austrians a heightened appreciation of the importance of the subjective and autonomous nature of expectations. Lachmann’s most significant contribution to economic theory was to the theory of capital. These contributions can be found in numerous articles in the 1940s, during the LSE period, culminating in his book Capital and its Structure (1956), and in various articles subsequently right up until his death, and also in his final full length work, The Market as an Economic Process (1986). Lachmann’s capital theory is a logical outgrowth of his methodological and epistemological views. In other words, it reflects his thoroughgoing subjectivism. The topic is introduced by Peter Lewin, Clinical Professor in the Jindal School of Management, University of Texas, Dallas, and is joined in the discussion by Hans Eicholz, Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund; Paul Lewis, Reader in Economics and Public Policy at King’s College London; Mario J. Rizzo, professor of economics at NYU, and Bill Tulloh is a cofounder and economist at Agoric.

See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".

Desire or Dominance?: Sexual Harassment’s Legal Maze

The discrimination approach doesn’t give us adequate tools for managing real differences between the sexes.

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (John Milton)

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, edited with Introduction and Notes by William Talbot Allison (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1911).