Liberty Fund

“Contextualizing” Jefferson

The words that inspired the abolitionist movement and the words that constitutionalized abolition both came from the extraordinary mind at Monticello.

Stigma and Sympathy

If addiction is a disease, and nothing else, then the addict is a slave of his biochemistry.

Symbols of Cosmic Order

Political order stems human anxiety caused by a primary intuition that existence is out of nothing.

Scottish Christianity Before the 18th Century

Paul Mueller for AdamSmithWorks September 16, 2020

NASA Is Paying for Moon Rocks

NASA is creating financial incentives for private companies to market lunar resources. This could be a first step to developing lunar mining capabilities. The biggest benefit of the program, though, is precedent. It puts the U.S. government’s imprimatur on space commerce. Given the ambiguities in public international space law, this precedent has the potential to steer space policy and commerce in a pro-market direction.

This is a key paragraph in Alexander William Salter and David R. Henderson, “NASA is Paying for Moon Rocks. The Implications for Space Commerce are Huge,” AIER, September 16, 2020.

Read the whole thing. It’s short.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments: Conclusion of the Sixth Part

Robert Chitester on Milton Friedman and Free to Choose

Once upon a time, a man had an idea for a documentary on free-market ideas. Then that man was introduced to Milton Friedman. The result of their collaboration was a wildly successful book and PBS series, Free to Choose, capturing Friedman’s view of the world, how markets work, and the role of individual liberty in […]

It’s Complicated: Grasping the Syllogism

A few weeks ago, I presented the following syllogism:

Issue X is complicated.

Perspective Y’s position on X is not complicated.

Therefore, Perspective Y is wrong about X.

Almost all of the comments were critical.  Some notable examples:

Dan:

As someone who used to live in San Francisco and was involved in YIMBY activism, this argument was used frustratingly often by NIMBYs: “The housing crisis is complicated and you can’t simplify it to econ 101, therefore just building more won’t help”. The NIMBYs, after criticizing YIMBYism for being econ 101, then never made an econ 102 argument.

The problem with this argument is that you can make yourself sound wise about anything by claiming that it’s complicated and simple solutions won’t work.

Salem:

How about:

Trade is complicated.

The Goodriches: An American Family (Dane Starbuck)

A biography of one of Indiana’s most prominent twentieth-century families. It begins with the birth of James P. Goodrich in 1864 and continues through the death of his son Pierre F. Goodrich in 1973. James Goodrich served as governor of Indiana from 1917 to 1921 and as adviser to Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. In later years, Pierre Goodrich, successful businessman and entrepreneur, would set aside a portion of his estate to found Liberty Fund because he believed that the principles of liberty on which our nation was founded need to be constantly kept before the public. This work is a revealing window into the founding ideals of both Indiana and our country, and how our founders meant these ideals to be lived.

Ruth Scurr, "J.S. Mill & Life Writing" (August 2020)

Welcome to our August 2020 edition of Liberty Matters. In this essay and discussion forum Ruth Scurr, a fellow and director of Studies in Human, Social and Political Sciences at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge discusses JS Mill and the concept of what she calls “life writing,” According to Scurr life writing is an area of scholarship that involves biography, autobiography and memoir. Her essay focuses on Mill’s Autobiography and the approach that Mill took to crafting what he believed would become the main narrative of his life. Her essay, and the three splendid response essays from our other contributors, raise interesting questions about the outside forces that influence how we view historical figures as well as the caveats we should use while reading “life writing”. As liberalism is increasingly under attack in the modern world, discussing Mill, arguably the 19th century’s most famous English liberal, is particularly relevant.