Depressed Metabolism

All politics is redistributive. Although this is often hidden from view through appeals to the social contract, democracy, and the common good, the recent attempts to reward unsound business practices with taxpayers’ money make even the most sophisticated appeal to the “common good” look suspicious. Although advocates of liberty have offered persuasive accounts about the [...]

One of the most puzzling aspects in the discussion about the current financial crisis is that the situation is treated as a form of “market failure” that the Federal Reserve is simply faced with. One does not have to be a strict adherent of the Austrian School of Economics to consider the possibility that public [...]

In 1940 the American author Lothrop Stoddard published an account of wartime Nazi Germany called “Into the Darkness.” Although the book is supposed to be an objective account, it is not difficult to note the restraint the author needs to exercise to not be more critical, if not scathing, about many aspects of the Nazi [...]

The publisher Liberty Fund has republished Anthony de Jasay’s book “Social Contract, Free Ride: A Study of the Public Goods Problem.” In this book, de Jasay, one of the most original and sharpest political philosophers of our age, offers a critical review of the public goods argument for the state. He argues that a) economists [...]

Edge published a new essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the ‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable’, called The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics:
If small probability events carry large impacts, and (at the same time) these small [...]

The Ludwig Von Mises Institute Senior Fellow, David Gordon, recently wrote an article on the legacy of the political philosopher John Rawls. In this piece, he discloses some interesting information about the relationship between John Rawls and Robert Nozick:
“In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, he had praised A Theory of Justice as a great work of [...]

In ‘Who is Against Evolution?’, David Friedman discusses the phenomenon that most people who are against teaching creationism tend to avoid and discourage discussing the human implications of evolution themselves:

People who say they are against teaching the theory of evolution are very likely to be Christian fundamentalists. But people who are against taking seriously the [...]

In his paper “Frog’s legs, shared ends, and the rationality of politics” (PDF), Anthony de Jasay discusses the role of rationality in political philosophy. He writes that “much of the old confusion we deplore in political theory, and much of the fresh confusion we spread when trying to get rid of what has been spread, [...]

It is well established that investors with a diversified portfolio of index funds can do just as well (if not better) than “professional fund managers.” Now comes a new study that shows that consumers predict inflation as accurately as professional economists.

Thomas and Alan Grant of Baker University in Kansas analyzed surveys of U.S. and Australian [...]

In a recent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, “For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time,” Charles Murray writes:

Outside a handful of majors — engineering and some of the sciences — a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even [...]

An interesting article on Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Sunday Times:
Last May, Taleb published The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It said, among many other things, that most economists, and almost all bankers, are subhuman and very, very dangerous. They live in a fantasy world in which the future can be controlled [...]

Although critical philosophers like Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979) are not known for their contributions to economics or analytical philosophy, Marcuse’s essay “The Ideology of Death” (1952) should appeal to those who think that death is not a necessary part of existence, let alone something to celebrate. In this essay, the author discusses the phenomenon [...]

The blog Soft Machines writes about a new opinion piece in the Financial Times by David Shaywitz and Nassim Nicholas Taleb on biomedical science and drug discovery. The molecular revolution in biology was supposed to substitute rational design of drugs for trial and error and handwaving. So why do pharmaceutical companies have so little to [...]

As Americans increasingly feel the pain of long-distance commuting, economic ignorance of politicians combines with our perceived inalienable right to low gas prices to find a scapegoat in the world’s most hated minority in bad economic times, the speculator.
As the economist and political philosopher Anthony de Jasay recently pointed out, politicians seem to believe that [...]

Economic illiteracy and the human bias to look for a scapegoat conspire to single out speculators in oil futures as the reason for high oil prices.  Exploiting this ignorance about economics, airline executives call on Congress to curb excessive speculation in one of the most blatant examples of corporate socialism in recent history. What is [...]

In Cato Journal, Volume 28, No. 1 (Winter 2008), the independent scholar Anthony de Jasay reviews four common fallacies (as presented in the works of John Stuart Mill, Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Armen Alchian) that many social scientists and political journalists keep repeating without rigorous analysis.
The first fallacy is that production should be governed [...]

Almost as old as “rights-talk” is skepticism about the existence of (natural) rights and justice. Such skepticism has been expressed by Plato’s Thrasymachus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ragnar Redbeard, and Max Stirner, the latter stating that “one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right.”
In the 20th century the “reclusive libertarian iconoclast” [...]

If there is one thing that characterizes contemporary political discourse, and contemporary political liberalism in particular, it is the obsession with “rights.” Individual rights are absolute, or “trumps,” that do not permit to be overridden by collective goals, and can only be defeated by another trump. But since every right implies a corresponding obligation (a [...]

On his website, Robin Hanson discusses an unfilled niche in economics which he calls the “economics of science fiction” or “economics of future technology.” Another modern phrase would be “Singularity economics.” Hanson describes the economics of science fiction as the:

“economic analysis of the sorts of assumptions typically explored in science fiction. It is distinguished [...]

One common answer to the question of what should characterize an acceptable theory of justice is that it should be “impartial.” This is generally understood to mean that a theory of justice should not be tailored to the interests of specific individuals (or groups of individuals). This raises two questions. First, do [...]

Is ethics a science? Can there be progress in ethics similar to the progress we observe in science?
In this brief article it is argued that traditional approaches to ethics are lacking. A minimalist “economic” approach, as suggested in the writings of the (Hobbesian) contractarian philosopher David Gauthier, is presented. It concludes by discussing the limits [...]