An analogy of books to money. As an exercise of imagination, let us suppose that the following were a true description of our publishing industry: * Only the government may print books.* The government decides how many books may be in circulation at any given time.* The government determines the initial price at which books […]
Money and Books: monopoly and censorship analogy Read More »
Quotations on Nazi socialism and fascism. Excerpt from Nietzsche and the Nazis.
Appendix 2: Quotations on Nazi socialism and fascism [Nietzsche and the Nazis] 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’ve been reading Richard Seaford’s Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy. Seaford’s theme: “the monetisation of the Greek polis in the sixth and fifth centuries BC contributed to a radical transformation in thought that is, in a sense, still with us. Academics—perhaps because they are more interested in texts than in money—have
Greek money and philosophy Read More »
I’m again doing some work on the philosophy of money, now that we’re into the Bitcoin and crypto era, so reprising this piece. At the Library of Law and Liberty’s site — my reaction to Leonidas Zelmanovitz’s ambitious work in the philosophy of money: Review of The Ontology and Function of Money: The Philosophical Fundamentals of
My review of Zelmanovitz on money’s truth and money’s health Read More »
[This excerpt is from Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault] Marxism and waiting for Godot First formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, classical Marxist socialism made two related pairs of claims, one pair economic and one pair moral. Economically, it argued that capitalism was driven by a logic of competitive
Marx’s three failed predictions [EP] Read More »
A flotilla of ships is approaching your shore. Does it matter to you whether they are carrying smartphones and shoes — or rockets and soldiers? In his Economic Sophisms, Frédéric Bastiat makes this exasperated point: “A French ironmaster says: ‘We must protect ourselves from the invasion of English iron!’ An English landlord cries: ‘We must
War metaphors and trade — Bastiat Read More »
Reprising this fascinating short article in the British Journal of Medicine by Robert N. Proctor, professor of the history of medicine at Penn State University: “The anti-smoking campaigns of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-1945” [pdf]. The campaign was mounted despite the arguments that (1) taxes on tobacco were
Famous anti-smoking activists from history Read More »