Books
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The Backward-Looking Storyteller
“History is slow, with fascinating moments and events scattered among tons and tons of mundane and inconsequential things. When we select some of them and weave them into an iconic story, we often make a mockery of the past – and ourselves a disservice.” ~ Joakim Book
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Addressing Financial Exclusion: The Right Way and the Wrong Way
“Marginalized groups of people are more than capable of succeeding when you just get out of the way. Policymakers today must understand the devastating consequences of well-intentioned policies and the hard fact that an imperfect private sector response is far preferable to a counterproductive government response.” ~ Ethan Yang
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Being Careful With Numbers, Words, and Visions: Review of Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities
“Discrimination and Disparities is classic Sowell, and people who are already familiar with his work will find a lot of claims he has made elsewhere. However, these will likely be news to people who haven’t already read Intellectuals and Society, Intellectuals and Race, or Affirmative Action Around the World. Discrimination and Disparities is an important…
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Let’s Make A Deal: The Bourgeois Deal Among Many Others
“As H.L. Mencken famously said, the urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the desire to rule it. We’ve paid the butcher’s bill for generations of guillotine-operating humanitarians and kindly inquisitors. Perhaps we should grow up a little and take a different path.” ~ Art Carden
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Arthur Okun, Class Warfare, Redistribution, and Income Growth
“The low-income worker is a net beneficiary of bigger government for about 10 years. But as time goes on, the worker would be far better off with smaller government and faster growth. Different assumptions will lead to different results, of course. My goal is simply to help readers understand two things: bigger government leads to…
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Dissenters, Unite!
“Nemeth falls for the classic writer’s mistake of telling her readers something rather than showing them. She repeats her talking points about the group value of dissent and she explains the results from various experimental studies, but she never really delves into precisely how those studies convincingly prove the psychological results they aim for: that…
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“After the Revolution, You Will Like Going Camping!” G.A. Cohen’s Camping Trip Reconsidered
“This doesn’t require a thought experiment: people vote for capitalism and against socialism in droves by trying to move to freer and more prosperous countries. Socialists might have laudable goals like feeding, clothing, and sheltering everyone–and I agree with these–but I would no more suggest socialism to treat poverty and inequality than I would prescribe…
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The Blockchain and the Future of Everything
“The current apparatus of centralized data processing and storage is not only incapable of adequately handling the prerequisite needs of this digital society, but it might also turn it into a dystopia. What we need is a highly decentralized and efficient infrastructure that is impervious to manipulation. Blockchain technology seems to be the essential component…
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The Debate Between Conservatives and Libertarians
“Most of the contributors to this book are deceased so we are left to speculate about what their views toward Covid lockdowns would be. I suspect most if not all would be astonished and horrified at the policy choices of this past year. These writers were not technocrats but humane and learned thinkers who focused…
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The State Is Not Entrepreneurial
“But the State is not a company, and McCloskey and Mingardi dismantle the theoretical errors of Professor Mazzucato, who, like many others, prefers to ignore the analysis of the nature and consequences of the fundamental characteristic of the State: the monopoly of legitimate coercion.” ~ Carlos Rodríguez Braun
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Masters of Puppets and Men of System: Review of Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman, Escaping Paternalism
“The men and women of the new paternalist system would do well to step away from the chess-board and to consider that ‘in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it.’ In Escaping…
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Pathogens in One Lesson, Courtesy of Sunetra Gupta
“Why in the 21st century so many people have chosen to forget what we learned over the course of the 20th century is a true mystery. Fortunately, this book offers an elegant way back to recover our senses and pursue a more scientific approach to pandemics in the future.” ~ Jeffrey Tucker
