Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
14 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in Austrian economics, liberalism, libertarianism, Murray Rothbard
[Update: I’m on vacation next Friday, so the next installment of this book club will be in two weeks.]SummaryIn this chapter on “Personal Liberty,” Rothbard puts run-of-the-mill “civil libertarians” to shame. He’s more radical than most of the left on traditional civil liberties like freedom of speech, drugs, and wiretapping. He stands up for the…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 6
13 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
…on March 12 we’ll be launching Liberalism.org, a new project from IHS [Institute for Humane Studies]. We’re aiming to build something akin to a modern-day coffee house of the liberal tradition—a digital gathering place where today’s most innovative liberal thinkers can weigh tradeoffs, think across differences, and apply liberal values to the challenges of today and…
Liberalism.org
12 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, entrepreneurship, financial economics, fiscal policy, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, liberalism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
Below is my column on Fox.com on the new push by Democrats to impose a wealth tax nationally. While the…
Eat the Rich: Sanders and Khanna Introduce Federal Billionaires Tax
08 Mar 2026 1 Comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, law and economics, laws of war, liberalism, Marxist economics, war and peace
There is something profoundly wrong with a moral culture that shouts genocide at Israel’s war against Hamas while averting its gaze from an actual genocide unfolding in Sudan. Words matter, especially words that name humanity’s gravest crimes. When they are deployed selectively—loudly against one conflict, quietly or not at all against another—they cease to illuminate injustice and instead reveal hypocrisy. […]
Selective Outrage and the Erosion of Genocide Meaning
07 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, income redistribution, liberalism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
Is it time to pack our belongings and head to Argentina, where Javier Milei is dramatically improving economic policy and cultural attitudes? I’m joking, but also not joking. The reason I’m not joking is that there’s a very depressing scenario for America’s near-term economic outlook. It involves these six potential developments. Thanks in part to […]
The Nightmare Scenario Leading to a Wealth Tax
05 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of education, economics of media and culture, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - Australia
Australian writers’ festivals are frequently accused of being “pro-Palestinian” or anti-Israeli. The charge is usually made in frustration: panels on Gaza and Palestinian literature are common; strongly pro-Israel voices are rare; and anyone who questions the imbalance is quickly told they are confusing “balance” with “morality”. Yet the more interesting question is not whether a […]
Why Most Australian Writers’ Festivals Are Pro-Palestinian
03 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, discrimination, economic history, gender, labour economics, liberalism, Marxist economics Tags: Age of Enlightenment, Iran, sex discrimination
I put something like this up years ago, but it’s a good way to see, with just a few clicks, what happened to Iran after the “Revolution”. Let’s taken women’s dress, a touchstone of misogyny and theocratic oppression. Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, it was a pretty free country in that respect, and everyone…
Iranian women: 1970 vs. 2020
02 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, industrial organisation, law and economics, liberalism, Murray Rothbard, privatisation, Public Choice
Update: I’m doing a Substack Live today on You Have No Right to Your Culture with the Boyd Institute’s Peter Banks. 4 PM ET.SummaryThis is the shortest chapter of the book, just six pages long. Rothbard makes a laundry list of what he calls “the major problem areas of our society” and argues that government…
Bet On It Book Club: For a New Liberty, Chapter 4
28 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in liberalism, Marxist economics, politics Tags: British politics, regressive left
The UK is having one of its regular by-elections, this time in Gorton and Denton, a constituency in Manchester. The constituency was new at the 2024 election, and at the time was won by Labour’s Andrew Gwynne with 50.8% of the vote, with Reform a distant second on 14.1%. Gwynne had been an MP for…
The abomination of Britain’s Gorton and Denton by-election
27 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, economics of crime, law and economics, liberalism, politics, war and peace Tags: Nazi Germany, The Holocaust racial discrimination, World War II
Ashley Church writes: The Holocaust did not begin with the gas chambers of Auschwitz or Treblinka. It began much earlier, with ideas, laws, exclusions, and the slow normalisation of cruelty. The part that history often forgets. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, there was no plan to exterminate the Jews. What did exist…
The history of anti-semitism
27 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of education, health economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: sex discrimination
For two reasons I think that Jesse Singal‘s long op-ed (really a “guest essay”) in today’s NYT will mark a turning point in public and professional attitudes towards “affirmative care.” First, the NYT saw fit to publish a piece showing that many American medical associations have promoted “affirmative care” of gender-dysphoric adolescents, despite those associations…
Jesse Singal’s op-ed in the NYT: A turning point in “affirmative care”?
25 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics Tags: British politics, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
In the classic movie comedy, A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese lamented, “do you have any idea what it’s like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing.” Now 86, Cleese has a more pressing concern about being English: whether his exercise of […]
No Laughing Matter: John Cleese Declares “I’m Afraid They are Going to Have to Arrest Me.”
24 Feb 2026 1 Comment
in defence economics, laws of war, liberalism, libertarianism, Marxist economics, war and peace Tags: World War II
Pacifism presents itself as the highest moral ground: a principled refusal to engage in violence, an insistence that all killing is always wrong, and a hope that moral purity can disarm brutality. In practice, however, pacifism is not merely naïve but morally evasive. It refuses responsibility for consequences, confuses intentions with outcomes, and ultimately relies […]
The Moral Failure of Pacifism
20 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in economics of education, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: free speech, Israel, Middle-East politics, political correctness, regressive left
Every day, it seems, another group gets ideologically captured, valorizing Palestine (or Hamas) and demonizing Israel. This is dispiriting for Jews, but the latest such capture—of the free-expression literary group PEN America—is especially depressing. The decline of PEN American was first evidenced to me when, in 2015, it decided to give a “freedom of expression”…
PEN America gets captured: organization accepts Palestine as a member and rejects Israel; Jewish chief executive resigns after accusations of being a “Zionist” and not signing on to Israel’s “genocide”
19 Feb 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, discrimination, economic history, economics of crime, International law, law and economics, laws of war, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: economics of colonialism, Gaza Strip, Israel, Middle-East politics, regressive left, war against terror, West Bank
There are many courses in universities that seem not to be exercises in objective teaching and learning, but rather courses designed to foist certain political ideologies or points of view on students. One of them at this university was called to my attention by several in our community; it seems to be a course on…
A course of indoctrination at the University of Chicago
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
A History of the Alt-Right
Econ Prof at George Mason University, Economic Historian, Québécois
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Scholarly commentary on law, economics, and more
Beatrice Cherrier's blog
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
A rural perspective with a blue tint by Ele Ludemann
DPF's Kiwiblog - Fomenting Happy Mischief since 2003
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change
Tim Harding's writings on rationality, informal logic and skepticism
A window into Doc Freiberger's library
Let's examine hard decisions!
Commentary on monetary policy in the spirit of R. G. Hawtrey
Thoughts on public policy and the media
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Politics and the economy
A blog (primarily) on Canadian and Commonwealth political history and institutions
Reading between the lines, and underneath the hype.
Economics, and such stuff as dreams are made on
"The British constitution has always been puzzling, and always will be." --Queen Elizabeth II
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
WORLD WAR II, MUSIC, HISTORY, HOLOCAUST
Undisciplined scholar, recovering academic
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Res ipsa loquitur - The thing itself speaks
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
Researching the House of Commons, 1832-1868
Articles and research from the History of Parliament Trust
Reflections on books and art
Posts on the History of Law, Crime, and Justice
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Exploring the Monarchs of Europe
Cutting edge science you can dice with
Small Steps Toward A Much Better World
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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