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! 

Sweating the Small Stuff (and Other Lessons from Big Advertising)

Rory Sutherland is always a delight to listen to. (Well, by my lights anyway. Value is subjective.) If you've ever been interested in the psychology of advertising -- and if you love liberty, perhaps you should be -- then you could do much worse than Sutherland, one of the top brains at Ogilvy.

What's always fascinating to me is that while a few of us Mises and Hayek lovers are busy trying to learn a few tricks from Madison Ave., Sutherland and Co. are determined to learn a thing or two from the Austrian economists (and the behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman). So what does this cross-pollination yield?

Milton Friedman: "We Cannot Continue Half Slave, Half Free"

For a little background, Milton Friedman is talking to a special interest group -- the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which is still around today. Friedman warns generally about the threat of government growth and the loss of freedom. He says we cannot continue to exist in this half-state -- that is, "half-slave, half-free." But around 3:40, something interesting happens. Friedman courageously shows how the manufacturers are themselves becoming more and more beholden to government. The "masters" are no longer customers, Friedman says, Washington bureaucrats are.

F. A. Hayek: Democracy, Special Interests and Dictatorships

Leo Rosten utters a heresy: "not all people are intelligent." But he's right. And not all people are well informed, either.

Professor Hayek responds with another heresy: democracy is only good for one thing... the peaceful change of government. It has no other advantage, he says. In other words, Hayek would probably agree that democracy is overrated. Indeed, how prescient that Hayek says we would come to a point in which "democracy merely serves to authorize the actions of a dictator." 

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...

Coase and Becker: Big Guns on "Utility"

Ronald Coase and Gary Becker. Jeez. Can you get any heavier with the heavy hitters?

Before offering my insignificant opinion about their debate, I want first to say, Dear Reader, that you'll find no bigger treasure trove of great thinkers on film than you'll find at Free To Choose Network. So stay tuned. 

Now, what could we possibly say about a debate between two Nobel Prize winners on one of the critical ideas driving modern economics? 

Dorian Electra: Roll With The Flow

Hopefully you've seen this by now. But if you haven't, consider your day brightened.

Dorian Electra has done a fantastic job of communicating the basic lessons of Austrian Economics in, well, a single song. She covers:

• Subjective value - One person's trash is another's treasure.
• Human action (in circumstances of time and place) - Your economic behavior is unique and perspectival.
• Knowledge problem, as well as problems of quantification and measurement - Macroeconomic models are pretty much useless.
• Unseen costs - Big digs and boondoggles mean foregone opportunities for growth.
• Bottom up versus Top Down - The collective behaviors of individual actors on the ground make up the economy (not aggregate demand).

A few crazy libertarians are going to topple Paul Krugman and expose his idiocy -- one video at a time. 

Chris Rufer on Self-Management

There were few posts last week because your humble editor was at the mother ship talking with his colleagues about management philosophies. I think it was a fruitful discussion. And one of the management philosophies we discussed comes from the Self-Management Institute. Self-management is a radical departure from most command-and-control styles. Above is the Institutes's founder and resident guru, Chris Rufer.

Why Nature Has No Managers

I came across this great little presentation on Google+ The speaker, Lanny Goodman, discusses the basic idea of self-management, which has become more than a trend due to some proven successes.

But editor, you may be wondering, why do you sometimes put up these videos on organization theory?

"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: