Ideas Matter

How Did You Become a Libertarian? (or Classical Liberal, or ...)

...left libertarian, or free-market conservative?

My story starts so predictably I'm almost embarrassed to admit it: my creative writing teacher in high school gave me Atlas Shrugged. And while I don't consider myself a Randian or an Objectivist, I would not be here were it not for Ayn Rand.

So what is your story? Did you read Ayn Rand? Milton Friedman? Friedrich Hayek? Robert Heinlein? Who? Leave a quick response in the comments below! 

Hypocrites and Half-Wits - Pen or Sword?

Free to Choose Press is proud to present: Hypocrites and Half-Wits: A Dose of Sanity from Cafe Hayek 

You want to work your ultra-liberal friends into a tizzy? What about your stoggy protectionist buddies? Nowhere will you find reasoned economic, and dare-I-say ethical, thinking carried out with such confidence and concision.

Saul Bellow and Milton Friedman

In 1976, two Americans both won the Nobel Prize. One in literature, one in economics. Respectively, Saul Bellow and Milton Friedman. In this great video footage from Free To Choose Network, literary maven Richard Stern points out what the two had in common. Do you know?

Mavens, Connectors, Evangelists - What are you?

Entrepreneurs create value in society. But there are different types of entrepreneurs. An interesting way of understanding types of entrepreneurs comes from Bijoy Goswami, Malcolm Gladwell and -- originally perhaps -- from the The Baghavad Gita. 

Recall that in Gladwell's The Tipping Point there were three basic behavioral types for spreading messages. But as Goswami points out in the video above, these “core types” hold in business, too. Indeed, in just about every sphere of life. The core types are Mavens, Relators and Evangelists (MRE).

Libertarian Books: Top Five

In this video, Stephen Davies offers his top five libertarian books. I'm going to offer mine:

1. Law, Legislation and Liberty (three volumes) - Friedrich Hayek
2. Anarchy, State and Utopia - Robert Nozick
3. Knowledge and Decisions - Thomas Sowell
4. Reason and Rules - Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan
5. Human Action - Ludwig von Mises

The next five, I couldn't resist...

The Hangover

How do you explain to people that recessions are good for us? Johan Norberg says, we have gone on too long confusing the symptoms with the pathology. Actually, he uses the metaphor of the alcohol abuser, so let's stick to that. Because if he's right, that means politicians and central banks are keeping us in perpetual party mode.

James Delingpole on the Climate Industrial Complex

James Delingpole is the man the climate-industrial complex loves to hate. I ran into him at a conference in Dallas. He gave me a galley copy of his book Watermelons. I read it from cover to cover and enjoyed every minute of it. Delingpole has put together a damning case against the green movement.

P. J. for Labor Day

The Peej (P.J. O'Rourke) requires no further commentary. Enjoy and happy Labor Day if you celebrate it.

"Invisible Hand" Friday (and the Theory of Moral Sentiments)

It's Friday. Let's pay homage to Adam Smith. The invisible hand -- the metaphor for which Smith is most famous -- has given rise to similar ideas like Hayek's spontaneous order. Smith showed us how you can have order without design, good without good intentions and prosperity without planning. This is one of the fundamental ideas of classical liberalism. Indeed, it is one of the fundamental ideas of Darwinism, as Darwin may very well have borrowed from Smith.

But what about that other book? The one we pass over so often without so much as a nod? As Dierdre McCloskey points out:

Sylvia Nasar: The Genesis of Modern Envy Politics

Isn't this interesting? The beginning of the boom in living standards also marked the beginning of modern literary egalitarianism (Dickens) and theoretical egalitarianism (Marx). I believe when humanity started seeing a profound rise in the standard of living -- not to mention a large intellectual class -- we started seeing the re-emergence of an innate hoarding taboo that would become wrapped in either narrative or theory.