Robert Heilbroner was the most famous American socialist intellectual of the 20th century. His The Worldly Philosophers sold millions, making it the second-best-selling economics textbook of all time. In my Business and Economic Ethics course, we read and discuss one of his articles. Here is Heilbroner, writing in 1980, about who owns what under socialism: […]
Robert Heilbroner on socialism’s mandatory labor Read More »
Piggybacking on economist David Henderson’s fun-with-a-point post, “I Was a Chinese Laborer,” about rules designed to limit how much overtime Chinese workers are allowed at Apple’s and other companies’ factories. The goal is “to bring its factories within China’s legal limits of 40 hours of work per week and 36 hours maximum overtime per month
I too was an exploited worker Read More »
Reprising from my interview with economist David Henderson: I asked him how economics came to be called the “dismal science.” The source, he explained, was Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth-century historian and essayist. The surprising reason for his coining the phrase? Carlyle was attacking free-market liberals for advocating the end of slavery. Free-market liberals argued that
The surprising origin of “the dismal science” [Slavery versus Free-market capitalism] Read More »
I like David Henderson’s approach to this solemn day of focusing on the individuals involved in wars rather than the often-gestural generalities. Henderson highlights the moving second stanza of John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields: In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The
John McCrae and Veterans Day Read More »
Jumping into the debate about “bleeding-heart libertarianism” (Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi, Bryan Caplan and again, David Friedman, David Henderson, and others), which seeks to integrate libertarianism with social justice. “Social justice” is one of those vaguely-specified, usually suspect phrases, defined by one defender of BHL as the position that “the moral justification of our
Bleeding-heart libertarianism? Read More »
David R. Henderson is associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and research fellow with the Hoover Institution. He has written for the New York Times, Fortune, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Reason, as well as scholarly articles for the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the
Profiles in Liberty: David R. Henderson Read More »
In this extended interview, philosopher Douglas B. Rasmussen responds to a series of questions (listed below) about his life and work. Dr. Rasmussen is a professor of philosophy at St. John’s University in New York. In addition to the books discussed in the interview, he is the author of articles in American Philosophical Quarterly, The
Profiles in Liberty: Douglas B. Rasmussen Read More »
Forthcoming in January 2012. Profiles in Liberty main page.
Profiles in Liberty — series trailer Read More »