“Environmentalists Clobber Texas” by Murray N. Rothbard |
“Economic Freedom around the World” by Robert A. Lawson |
“Intellectual Roots of Terror” by James Ostrowski |
“Freedom and Economic Growth in the Poorest Countries” by Ken Zahringer |
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I get the impression that some mainstreamers and statists of various stripes think we libertarians sometimes engage in exaggeration or hyperbole in the terms and labels we apply to the state–when we deem the US government to be a police state, its agents “jack-booted thugs,” when we call it criminal or fascist, when we refer to the state and its agents as evil, as overlords. Let’s take just one of these: the idea of the state assuming the role of our “overlords.” Daniel Klein has an ingriguing new article out in the latest Independent Review, “Against Overlordship“. Here’s the Abstract Klein sent me:
For social democrats, the state is to the community what the landlord is to the apartment complex or the owner is to his hotel. The notion that all social affairs within the polity are enveloped within a contract with the state, which owns some kind of encompassing substructure upon which all else within the polity depends, is the unspoken premise of social democracy and progressivism.
It’s worth a read, and it called to mind something I wrote in a footnote to a law review article in 1994 (now expanded into a book: Louisiana Civil Law Dictionary, Quid Pro Books, 2011; also discussed in this post):
It is interesting to note one (only apparent, as will be seen below) theoretical difference between the civilian and common law conception of real property ownership, concerning the right of the sovereign (king or state) to ultimate ownership of land. In Louisiana, “Ownership is the right that confers on a person direct, immediate, and exclusive authority over a thing. The owner of a thing may use, enjoy, and dispose of it within the limits and under the conditions established by law.” CC 477. Lands in the thirteen original American colonies were held in tenure, however, with the king as the ultimate lord and owner of the land. Cornelius J. Moynihan, Introduction to the Law of Real Property, 7-8, 22 (2d ed. 1988); see also Roger A. Cunningham, William B. Stoebuck, and Dale A. Whitman, The Law of Property , Chapter 1 (West 1984). “The American Revolution clearly ended any tenurial relationship between the English king and American landholders. Some of the original thirteen states adopted the view that the state had succeeded to the position of the English king as ‘lord’ and that tenure continued to exist, while other states enacted statutes or constitutional provisions declaring that land ownership should thenceforth be ‘allodial,’ or otherwise declaring that tenure was abolished.” Cunningham, et al., at 25 (footnotes omitted). However, “In the remaining states it would seem that lands are still held in tenure of the state as overlord.” Moynihan, at 23. “Throughout the rest of the United States, it seems clear that tenure never existed.” Cunningham, et al., at 25 (footnote omitted).
However, despite this theoretical difference between civilian and common law ownership, at least in some states such as Pennsylvania and South Carolina, Moynihan, at 23, “Even in the states where tenure may theoretically still exist between the state and one who owns land in fee simple, tenure would appear to have little or no practical significance. For all practical purposes, one who owns land in fee simple anywhere in the United States has ‘complete property’ in (full ownership of) the land.” Cunningham, et al., at 25 (footnotes omitted).
It must be pointed out that, in reality, in none of the 50 United States do nominal “landowners” really have “complete property” in “full ownership of” “their” land. To say that land is owned “allodially” is a fiction. For land is subject to expropriation by way of eminent domain. See, e.g., La. Civil Code 2626 [now La. R.S. 9:3176]:
The first law of society being that the general interest shall be preferred to that of individuals, every individual who possesses under the protection of the laws, any particular property, is tacitly subjected to the obligation of yielding it to the community, wherever it becomes necessary for the general use.
Article 2627 [now La. R.S. 9:3177] further provides:
If the owner of a thing necessary for the general use, refuses to yield it, or demands an exorbitant price, he may be divested of the property by the authority of law.
Furthermore, it cannot truly be said that one “owns” property which is subject to divestment if annual “rents” (i.e., property taxes) must be paid to the sovereign for the privilege of retaining possession of one’s property. Tenure, then, exists after all, in all fifty states, and the theoretical difference pointed to above is not really a difference at all.
“Moderates, Extremists, and Liberty” by Gary Galles |
“‘Economic Warfare’” by Walter Block |
“Money, Monopoly, and Market Intervention” by Robert P. Murphy |
“The Attack on Accidental Americans” by Wendy McElroy |
I hear the State a comin’ 
It’s rollin’ ’round the bend,
And we’ll never see the sunshine,
Since, that day we let them in,
We’re stuck in this American Prison,
But they keep steamrollin’ on,
And we let them drag us along,
On down to every last home.
When I was just a baby,
My Mama told me, “Son,
Always be a good boy,
Don’t ever play with guns,”
But they killed a man in Georgia,
Just to watch him die,
When I saw that syringe within,
I hanged my head and cried.
(Sung to Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash.)
Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.
From Socialism (1922). Thanks Mises.ca
“The Attack on Accidental Americans” by Wendy McElroy |
“Obama’s Patent Reform: Improvement or Continuing Calamity?” by Stephan Kinsella |
“How the ‘Great War’ Began” by Anders Mikkelsen |
“Rockefeller, Morgan, and War” by Murray N. Rothbard |
The official part of the conference began early after an evening in which participants spent the evening in Vienna’s amazing cafes and restaurants. So of course coffee hour was spent sharing tales of delicious meals in fascinating places. In my own mind, I’m thinking back to our conference in Spain where the meals were more exotic and peculiar than in Vienna.
The cuisine here is more familiar to Americans but with an elegance that was a nice change from the usual American fare. The plates usually come with two or three main simple items: a soup or small salad, potatoes or some vegetable, and a meat such as fish or veal. Again, there is a quiet elegance about the style, which is also reflected in the restaurants and cafes, which do not play loud music (relief!) and which permit smoking, usually throughout the restaurant or in special places (no conflicts and nothing is really stinky). I’ve never seen so many coffee shops and restaurants per block in any place in the world.
The first speaker of the day was Toby Baxendale, who was instrumental in the founding of our sister UK organization, the Cobden Centre, which he describes as a “do think” and not so much a “think tank.” His description goes far beyond what in the United States is pathetically called “political activism” – an activity that tends to be nearly as corrupt as politics itself. The “do think” is not about warming up to persons and institutions but instead specializes in “political agitation” – upsetting the existing institutions with arguments, editorials, radical legislation designed to make a point, and generally being a pain in the neck. In particular, Baxendale discussed the formation of a radical movement of monetary reform in parliament. They are pushing debates on banking reform that would be insist on clarity in the deposit contract, as a means of pushing sound practices.
Another bill concerns the introduction of competing currency bill, a push to make real the hope of F.A. Hayek for free competition between currencies. This is one means to smash the monopoly. He urges these reforms as soon as possible lest the entire system of central banking explodes as it continues to monetize bad debt.
Josef Sima of the Czech Republic was the next up with a description of his activities in Prague. He reports that his initial contact with the Mises Institute completely changed his life and lead to his lifetime vocation as a teacher and activist for liberty. He described the remarkable progress made in his country for liberal ideas, nurtured by the ideas of the Austrian School. It is at the center of the debate over the future of European Union. He further described the application of Hayek’s principle that in politics, the worst get on top.
Thorsten Polleit produced a demonstration that Misesian monetary theory is methodologically related to Mises’s overall framework for understanding economic theory in general. It can be logically deduced that money is depreciated when its quantity is expanded by the banking system. Eventually, argued Polleit, fiat money is destined for collapse.
Philipp Bagus’s book The Tragedy of the Euro, came out just as the Euro entered entered its period of instability and collapse. The core problem is presented in detail in the book: while European monetary policy is united, fiscal policy and banking practice remains the province of sovereign states. Thus is the entire system afflicted by a moral hazard that leads to relentless bailouts. This tips the balance of the great debate in Europe today: libertarian or socialist. The libertarian view favor individual liberty, rights, and free trade, while the socialist view favors central planning, protectionism, political rule, and constant intervention by the state against the economy. The sovereign debt crisis has pressed the issue and the need to choose between these two visions. Bagus speculated that the only way out will be for the EU to break up entirely, with Germany in particular leaving the union and the Euro.
Arlene Oost-Zinner, the translator of several major Austrian works from Germany to English, including Mises’s memoirs and the Shulak-Unterkoefler work on the Austrian tradition, spoke about the responsibility of translation. The translator must breath new life into the text, which is an awesome responsibility. He must serve the text, creating a new text which might be different from the original. But there are many considerations in this task, which is far more art than science. She provided many examples of the tradeoffs and decisions to be made in translations from Menger to Shulak-Unterfoefler.
Jorg Guido Huslmann, who teaches in three languages, spoke about Mises’s monetary theory and its evolution over a lifetime of writing. Hulsmann sought to explain Mises analytical approach to tackling such a huge topic and producing a theory robust enough to last 100 years. The great themes were four: the typology of money, the subjective value of money, the purchasing power of money, and the economics of banking. The secondary themes concern the theory of monopoly and the an institutional analysis of government intervention.
In the afternoon came the walking tours, which covered the great spots in the town that mark the Austrian tradition, streets walked by Mises, Menger, and all the rest. Everyone ended the tour back at a cafe where we sang the songs of the Mises Circle in an atmosphere that seemed extremely authentic. The singing went on for two hours and spirits were extremely high.
I have previously estimated that the patent system imposes at least $42 billion in net loss to the economy annually (Costs of the Patent System Revisited). As Mike Masnick notes in his Techdirt post Patent Trolls Cost The Economy Half A Trillion Dollars, a stunning new study by James Bessen, Michael Meurer, and Jennifer Ford, The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls, concludes that companies sued by patent trolls have lost $500 billion from 1990 to 2010, with increasing annual costs of late, on the order of $80 billion per year over the last four years. It’s not clear how much of this cost would overlap with my conservative $42 billion annual estimate, but obviously not all of it can, as the sum is greater; and it does not even address non-”troll” wealth-destroying patent battles such as the smartphone wars between Microsoft, Google, Apple, Samsung, Motorola, RIM, and others.
My $42 billion estimate was intended to be conservative. I’d venture that even an estimate of $100 billion a year of net loss in the US economy alone due solely to patents is still conservative. That’s at least a trillion dollars of net loss in innovation and economic productivity every decade, people. A trillion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking serious money.
Libertarian Ethics, an online course co-taught by David Gordon and yours truly. Gordon will be covering the ethics of Rothbard and Hoppe, and I’ll be covering the ethics of Mises. Please join us!
“The Economic Theory of the Firm” by Per Bylund |
“Rockefeller, Morgan, and War” by Murray N. Rothbard |
“Clarifying Subjective Valuation” by Alexander Peterson |
“Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?” by Robert P. Murphy |
Al, one of the students in David Gordon’s Economic Reasoning course (which is still open for enrollment) had this to say about the first lecture:
This is my second course from Dr. Gordon. This first lecture was like all his others, full of wit, humor, depth of knowledge, coupled with an easy going understandable delivery. How could one not enjoy his instruction, regardless of the subject.
And Justin, another student, had this to say:
In terms of intelligence and perception Dr. David Gordon is unparalleled in the present day; arguably in the whole of modern philosophy and not simply in the relatively narrow field of libertarianism. This was on perfect display in the opening lecture of Gordon’s recent course for the Mises Academy, Economic Reasoning. Over the period of an hour Dr. Gordon communicates dozens of complex concepts, refutations and causal relations, but these ideas are not simply stated in a dry disjointed manner, they are related to a history of various schools economics and philosophy, and are illustrated in a way were each idea logically follows from one to the next. However, this in itself is not what is impressive about Dr. Gordon’s lecture, but the clarity in which he communicates these various ideas. Even if one was not familiar with the various schools of economics and philosophy that are being dealt with, they will still be able to follow Dr. Gordon’s explanations with very little effort on their own part. All that is required is the desire for knowledge.
And finally Martin said:
David Gordon’s course is Economics that “even a caveman can understand”. If you’re sick from trying to follow the “economics” from the taking heads on MSM (floods,earthquakes and wars create wealth) this course is the cure.
The second lecture is this Thursday. It’s still early enough to sign up, catch up, and join in!
Doug French opened today’s events in Vienna with a discussion about the extraordinary ingathering of people from all over the world. And truly, at the opening reception, people were walking from person to person in amazement to see so many friends and new faces from people from all over the Americas and Europe and the UK. French said that this event has brought together 210 attendees from 28 countries.
It was indeed a roomful of friends, students, intellectual, businesspeople, all gathered in the Austrian Academy of Sciences in what is surely one of the most beautiful lecture halls in the world. An event like this would not have been possible without people on the ground making the arrangements with all the relevant institutions, and truly we all felt welcomed and at home.
Mural in the coatroom of the Academy of Sciences
The coatroom was the first room we found a huge mural of debaters from the old days, with Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk as the lead voice. amazing! I apologize for my rotten iPhone pics.
The first speaker was Gabriel Calzada, now visiting Francisco Maroquin in Guatamala. He opened with the background of the founding of the Austrian tradition, beginning with Josef Schumpeter’s thesis that economics really began with the scholastic thinkers on the Continent They were the first in print on matters of economic theory. Gabriel speculated that there were two factors that give rise to economics: the search for an explanation of money’s value in light of gold imports from the new world to Spain, and also the search for an explanation of the economics of war.
This second factor might have been most significant. What gives rise to war? How is war financed? How do governments go about depreciating the currency? Gabriel surveyed of all the great Spaniards of the 15th and 16th century who worked on time preference theory, price theory, monetary theory, cost theory, trade theory, and more. Gabriel’s own favorite is Juan de Mariana who was imprisoned not for his justification of tyrannicide but for his monetary writings. Leonardo Lessio helped pull the ideas of out of the scholastics into the Protestant world. He spoke of the links between the scholastics and Locke, Turgot, Condillac, and Cantillon. He completed his tracing of the Austrian tradition from the 15th century through the modern Austrian School with a tribute to Menger’s own scholastic education.
Detail of Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk
The talk by Rahim Taghizadegan, founder of the our sister organization in Vienna, is the one that caused the quiet hush to fall over the audience, as we all realized the significance of the place where we were meeting. Carl Menger defended his dissertation in this very room in the Academy of Science. Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk had lectured here many times; it was his second home. Friedrich von Wieser had too.
This was the room that had nurtured the the ideas, giving birth to the modern revolution in economics. I would like to describe it but it is not possible really simply because of the scale and materials. The wood floors are themselves gorgeous. The crystal chandeliers are stunning. The walls and the columns and the statues are marble, no doubt brought from many lands. The acoustics are perfect.
In any case, Rahim treated us to a round-up of the history of the school, using original documents, including telegrams to and from the main figures in the history of the School. He completed his presentation of this history with an actual recording of the voice of Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk. It was made as a test and demonstration of the new technology.
Boehm-Bawerk’s message was as intriguing as it was brilliant. He said that he had been asked to give a message to future generations. He said that he would much rather himself received a message from them, so that he could know the future. But, he adds, this is sadly not possible so there is nothing left to say. That was the message he gave, and it was in his own bright, jovial, and brilliant voice.
Shulak and Unterkoefler are co-authors of this wonderful work
Eugen-Maria Shulak presented a super-compressed history of Vienna, from the middle ages to the beginning of World War I, demonstrating how this town had given rise to the explosion of scientific exploration that took place here. The history of the demographics of this town give rise of massive immigration from all over Europe, and so it became a kind of melting pot.
Herbert Unterkoefler produced the first letter that referred to the Mengerian perspective as the Austrian School. The context was the struggle over economic method. It was used in contrast to the German Historical School. Carl Menger was the first to refer to the Austrian School. Herbert showed pictures of the university calendar from the early 20th century to demonstrate the huge dominance of the Austrian School over the university. In particular, Carl Menger gave rise to at least 40 followers in the university.
Unterkoefler concluded his talk with an interesting insight. His reading of the long tradition from the 19th century until the current day leads him to conclude that the core of the spirit of the Austrian School was more than just a paradigm. It is an attutude of exploration, tolerance, collegiality, friendship, and a shared love of human liberty
Peter Klein continued with a look at Mises’s own work and his place in the university today. As Mises grew older, he began to develop doubts about the institution of the university to really be the main vehicle for the transmission of ideas. He cites the many programs of the Mises Institute, including the Mises University and Mises Academy, which are working as monopoly breakers. He also cited some two dozens graduate institutions around the world that today provide training in the Austrian tradition.
Joseph Salerno discussed Mises in a long line of thinkers in the Currency School tradition that believed that sound money and sound banking was inseparable from the market suppression of fiduciary media unbacked by specie. He clarified that the main role of free banking is be a path toward sound banking, not unhinged credit expansion.
David Howden gave a round up of his and Philipp Bagus’s book on the Iceland meltdown. He described the spectacular event as having begun in the most inauspicious way: through a flawed system of deposit insurance. The system guaranteed unlimited deposits in any currency, encouraging a wild expansion that came crashing down in the worst way. I hadn’t known until this talk what a smash hit their book had become, and it is being translated now in five additional languages.
Robert Murphy finished out the day with a report on Mises’s first book, The Theory of Money and Credit. He urged readers not to skip around in this book but rather to read it from top to bottom, because it really is an integrated whole.
The social environmental of the conference is incredibly exuberant, like a happy meeting of Mises Global, which this truly is.
