To Paul Krugman: Thou Art the Man
Paul Krugman, in denouncing the excessive market power of Amazon (“Amazon’s Monopsony is Not OK,” New York Times, October 19), proclaims that the Robber Baron Era ended when “we as a nation” put an end to it. There’s a powerful story in the book of 2 Samuel about the prophet Nathan confronting King David after…
Breaching the Social Contract
America leads the world. No other nation imprisons more people than we do. Over 2.2 million men, women, and children currently reside in penitentiaries; another 4 million are under criminal supervision. In the past forty years, the incarcerated population has increased by a factor of five. Billions of our tax dollars are spent maintaining prisons…
Debt: The Possibilities Ignored
It’s no secret that economists and libertarians have developed a bad habit of assuming things about history and other societies on first principle without actually checking archaeological or anthropological findings. On occasion the divide can be quite stark. David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years gets a lot of momentum by attacking a widely circulated…
Classical Liberalism and Conservatism
Classical Liberalism and Conservatism: How is Chile’s “private” Pension System Best Conceptualised? Download a PDF copy of Dr. Mark Hyde’s study Classical Liberalism and Conservatism: How is Chile’s “private” Pension System Best Conceptualised? Introduction At the start of the 1980s, the Chilean state replaced a long-standing publicly-administered pension arrangement with a multi-pillar retirement system. Centrally, this…