The Cobb Blog » Economics

Happy Birthday, Mr. Libertarian by Jeff Riggenbach

jbcobb — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:55:51 +0000

Today — March 2nd — is Murray Rothbard’s birthday. Had he lived, he’d be 84 years old today. And there’s sadness in that, because 84 in the world of today, though still a “ripe old age,” is not really all that old. Lots of people live to be 84. Even libertarians do it. Both Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek lived to be 92. Milton Friedman lived to be 94. Henry Hazlitt lived to be 98. In Radicals for Capitalism, his important 2007 book about the history of the modern American libertarian movement, Brian Doherty centers his story around what he describes as “[f]ive thinkers … without whom there would have been no uniquely libertarian ideas or libertarian institutions of any popularity or impact in America in the second half of the twentieth century … Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Milton Friedman.”

“Four men and one woman,” Doherty writes, “four Jews and one Catholic; four economists and one novelist; four minarchists … and one anarchist … two native-born Americans and three immigrants; two Nobel Prize winners and three who remained not only aloof from most professional and intellectual accolades but generated a heated hostility from cultural gatekeepers.” Doherty makes no mention of it, but there’s yet another facile point of comparison he might have used in discussing his five major figures — their longevity. For of his five major figures, three (Mises, Hayek, and Friedman) lived into their 90s. The other two — Rand and Rothbard — never made it to 80. Rothbard never made it to 70. It’s almost as though radicalism makes you die young. Mises, Hayek, and Friedman were minarchists — classical liberals, to be more precise.

JB: To read the rest of the article posted byB.K. Marcus, or to listen to audio podcast by Mr. Riggenbach, go to the mises.org website, the best site in the world!

Classical Liberalism and International Relations by Edwin van de Haar

jbcobb — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:24:35 +0000

The following is based on a wonderful book entitled Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory: Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek by Edwin van de Haar.

Classical liberal ideas apply between states as well as within states, explains Edwin van de Haar

Questions of war and peace, or foreign policy in general, are among the most dramatic issues in politics. It is no wonder that classical liberal think tanks publish papers and articles on international affairs. Often these are reactions to current issues. They hardly ever clarify how their points of view relate to classical liberalism as a political philosophy. This begs the question: Does a classical liberal approach to international relations exist?

This article will argue in the affirmative, that it is possible to judge current foreign policy standpoints from a classical liberal perspective and to develop a classical liberal foreign policy agenda. Based on a study of four important classical liberal thinkers, David Hume, Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, it will show that classical liberalism is applicable in international as well as domestic politics.(1)

Academic international relations theory is dominated by American-style liberalism, which has much in common with European and Australian social democracy. One effect of this is the equation of liberalism with Immanuel Kant and Woodrow Wilson inspired calls for a world federation of the brotherhood of man, cosmopolitanism, a belief in the goodness of people and the possibility of abolishing war, optimism about the peace-enhancing outcomes of increased intergovernmental international organisation, international free trade, and so forth.(2)

Classical liberals often disagree on its precise definition, but most regard classical liberalism as the political theory characterised by a firm belief in individualism, negative freedom, non-religious natural law, spontaneous order, a limited state, and the rule of law.(3) In this article these ideas will be briefly introduced and then applied to international relations, thus sketching the contours of a classical liberal approach to world politics. In the process it will become clear that liberalism in the American sense differs substantially from classical liberalism.

JB: You can read the rest of the article at the Policy magazine website. Policy is amagazine published in Austalia and New Zealand, and is sponsored by theThe Centre for Independent Studies, Australasia’s leading independent public policy research institute or ‘think-tank’.

So Which Number is It? by John Lott

jbcobb — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:44:19 +0000

Here is a great dissection of the Obama’s Math Team to spin their impact on the economy. It seems as if the numbers from their own team don’t quite match. Of course, that could be the inability of supporters of the free market to understand this “new math”. We could solve all of this by appointing a Math Czar. John Lott says:

Of course, the number of jobs “saved or created” is meaningless, but the WH can’t even agree on the same number.

Axelrod, on CNN’s State of the Union: “But understand that, in this recession that began at the beginning of 2007, we’ve lost 7 million jobs. Now, the Recovery Act the president passed has created more than — or saved more than 2 million jobs. But against 7 million, you know, that — that is — it is cold comfort to those who still are looking.”

Read Mr. Lott’s column in its entirety right here. For more wisdom of this sort, check out his site at http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/.