February 23, 2012
He Had Moves Like Jagger
While flying yesterday, I began a set of readings for a Liberty Fund conference on Bastiat (thanks Matt!). I haven’t read Bastiat in a serious way since grad school. My…
Month: February 2012
February 23, 2012
Can a Defense of Liberalism Be Based on Our Ignorance?
Last week in my Constitutional Economics class we discussed Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty (1960). My favorite chapter in that book is Chapter 2, “The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization.”…
February 23, 2012
On Passing Laws and Pointing Guns
Libertarians sometimes take their analogies too far. From the plausible insight that taxation is like forced labor certain respects, they jump to the entirely implausible conclusion that taxation is forced…
February 21, 2012
A Libertarian Rehabilitation of Hobbes
I think that libertarian hostility to Hobbes has blinded them to one of his deepest insights, an insight that in many ways makes him less authoritarian than many of the…
February 20, 2012
Public Roads and the Right to Immiserate Would-Be Immigrants
While writing the section on free immigration for my forthcoming book, Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know, I posted this as my Facebook status: “If you claim to care about…
February 16, 2012
What We Can Learn from Drowning Children
So, it turns out that Bryan Caplan isn’t a bleeding heart libertarian either. Unlike Will, though, Bryan’s problem isn’t with the libertarianism of BHL, but with its bleeding heart. Bryan, you…