I was interviewed today for the Who Owns You? documentary, by Taylor Roesch. We spent almost an hour on the interview part in my study (luckily I had put my standard poodles Sir Boudreaux and Anna Banana Belle to the groomers to avoid barkage), then a couple hours, with his two assistants Ben and Jorge, partaking of beer, bourbon, and cigars and on my back porch. Then I sent them off to Fogo de Chao. “Begone!,” I said, “you roving documentarians!”
Update: my friends mock my standard poodles. Some pix of my babies are below. And here are some blogposts about them: Poodles Bite; Anna Belle (da poodle) ‘n Me.
As noted at Libertarian Papers: For those who like paper, Libertarian Papers is offered in a Print Archive version, at cost, via print-on-demand. Our second print archive is Vol. 1 (2009), Part 2: Articles 18-44 (555 pages). It’s available for $16 (our cost), from Lulu. It may be ordered from our Print Archive page.
(Thanks to Gil Guillory for putting this print archive together.)
A French-German Tulane law student acquaintance of mine (he speaks nine languages–I only speak about 0.7), Frederic Sourgens, sent me his Inn of Court brief where he argues for the impeachment of President Jefferson for undertaking the unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase. A bit rough, but fun… Download file. After 30 pages of legal reasoning, it concludes: “President Jefferson must be removed from office because of his blatant disregard of the Constitution constituting a high misdemeanor of state and high treason against the United States.“
“Being tagged “right-wing” has not helped the libertarian movement. It’s hurt.”
I agree with the latter. But that does not mean that we are left–we are not. Nor does it mean that “There are also good strategic reasons for associating libertarianism with the left and not with the right.”
“Associating”? What does this mean? It is not left. It is not right. It is neither left nor right. Both left and right are statist, evil, and anti-libertarian. Let us not forget that. [continue reading…]
So what if I am or am not an “anarchist”? What the [f*ck] difference does it make? Is there some Board of Anarchists who’s going to censure me if I don’t stick to the Anarchist Party Line and recite the Anarchist Catechism?
I want individual freedom … as much as is offered on the menu. Everything else is debating strategy and tactics.
What difference does it make?? Why… because the libertarian–who believes in “individual freedom”, expressed usually in terms of individual rights against aggression–opposes all forms of aggression as being unjust… he opposes both private aggression (crime) and public aggression, and he recognizes that states of necessity commit aggression–or, as you might say, infringe on “individual freedom.”
As we are conceptual, language-using beings, it helps to use words for various concepts.
I had formed the impression, given Alongside Night and other writings of yours, that you would have agreed with all this, so I can’t understand your disagreement here. [continue reading…]
I was reminded the other day of one of my favorite books, a great little introduction to philosophy: T.Z. Lavine’s From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest. Recommended to me by my good friend Jack Criss when I was in law school, I devoured it in 1991 or so. [Update: Some of the PBS series the book is based on appear to be available from American Archive of Public Broadcasting here and on Youtube]
Gil Guillory reminded me of another good one the other day, Jim Cox’s The Concise Guide to Economics, available online.
Assembled below are various posts and articles I, and a few others, have made on the topic of drug reimportation and the controversy about whether drug reimportation from countries with price caps should be reimported into the US even though this would undercut the higher patent-caused monopoly price charged here. This started with some allegedly free market scholars associated with Cato coming out against drug reimportation, and, thus, against free trade, since they also support patents, namely Doug Bandow, Michael Kraus, and Richard Epstein:
More recently: See the Wall Street Journal editorial also opposing free trade for the sake of upholding US patent monopoly prices: “When Biden, Trump and DeSantis Agree on Something, Watch Out” (Jan. 10, 2024): “The real point of the Biden-Trump-DeSantis mind-meld is to import foreign drug price controls that Congress won’t pass. This will erode U.S. intellectual property protection that rewards innovation and investment.”
And now we have former/alleged libertarian David Henderson in the War Street Journal writing this embarrassing, cringe doozy: “Be Thankful for High Drug Prices,” by David R. Henderson and Charles L. Hooper (Feb. 4, 2024). Subtitle: “If Americans weren’t overcharged, we wouldn’t have innovative treatments”. The article is full-throated in defense of our insane patent system and the monopoly prices it supports. Embarrassing and ridiculous, especially as he used to pretend to be against IP (Jeff Tucker winning economist David Henderson over to the anti-IP side).
Whatever the sins of libertarians re junk science the statists are 100x worse. And in my view the libertarians (and fellow travelers) have been very good on junk science–Bruce Ames (of Alar fame), Peter Huber (Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists A Conservative Manifesto, Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science In The Courtroom and others), Elizabeth Whelan (Toxic Terror), Petr Beckmann.
And various libertarians have been good on critiquing the pseudo-scientific enviros, e.g. Lew Rockwell and Bob Bidinotto (as much as we might disagree w/ Bidinotto on other issues like war, Ron Paul, statism v. minarchy, IP, etc.)
As for AGW — it’s a mystery to me why anyone would believe this has been established. First, there is little doubt we are between ice ages–we are in an interglacial period. The earth will start cooling again–even if for some reason it does warm up a bit more before it finally starts to cool. [continue reading…]
My wife and I saw Avatar this weekend in 3D. Here’s the verdict: four out of four stars. Absolutely amazing special effects–best I’ve ever seen; fun story; all in all a very fun, nice movie.
And at its core it was very libertarian: it was about a group of people (the Na’vi) defending their property rights on the world Pandora from aggressors (the human invaders), and about one of the humans (a soldier named Jake Sully) deciding to join and help the right side. Sure, the movie has some stilted dialogue in parts, and a few cliched scenes (I liked how the evil military commander referred to their outrageous assaults on the Na’vi as “shock and awe,” but his telling the troops that they would “fight terror with terror”–when the Na’vi had not really been shown to have done anything characterizable as terrorism–was a bit of a stretch in its attempt to dig at the current American “war on terror”), but overall it was great and fun, and libertarian. And the passion and vision and craft that has gone into this movie is amazing to behold. Cameron is to be commended for this great work of art. [continue reading…]
I was interviewed today for the Who Owns You? documentary, by Taylor Roesch. We spent almost an hour on the interview part in my study (luckily I had put my standard poodles Sir Boudreaux and Anna Banana Belle to the groomers to avoid barkage), then a couple hours, with his two assistants Ben and Jorge, partaking of beer, bourbon, and cigars and on my back porch. Then I sent them off to Fogo de Chao. “Begone!,” I said, “you roving documentarians!”
As noted at 
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