The Supreme Court’s recent decisions preventing colleges from using affirmative action—Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard College)—are wrong and unconstitutional. It’s a shame libertarians are in favor of this and sound like conservatives repeating dumb lines like “it should be merit oriented.” As if it was ever about merit: ever heard of legacy admissions or athletic admissions? Sure, mediocre-IQ Obama got into Harvard (racial affirmative action); but similarly mediocre-IQ George Bush got into Yale (legacy). Lower IQ football players get in and get scholarships too. So what?
It’s not about merit, or not only about merit; never was. Look at Harvard’s own website:
John Adams graduates
John Adams, future U.S. president, graduates. Before 1773, the graduates of Harvard were arranged in a hierarchy not of merit but “according to the dignity of birth, or to the rank of [their] parents.” By this rather undemocratic standard, Adams graduated 14th in a class of 24.
They also ignore federalism (the FedGov has no business regulating state universities) and constitutional problems with using the 14th Amendment to strike down state laws/actions they frown upon. 1 Libertarians sound like clueless rah rah patriotic type dumb conservatives who romanticize the past and pretend we should “return” to a merit based higher education system. Return? Sounds half-racist. I understand why Blacks sense hypocrisy when whites whine about racial preferences—when legacy admissions have been tantamount to racial preferences for whites for a looooong time.
Last year Larken Rose and I appeared on Patrick Smith’s Disenthrall show, 1 after Rose had posted some videos criticizing libertarians who pirated the HBO show “The Anarchists” as “poopheads,” 2 even though he technically opposes IP. Or claims to. According to Rose, you should “throwing a couple dollars towards HBO” or something, to avoid being a poophead. He granted that someone pirating an already-leaked video file is not committing aggression (they have no contract with the creator), but they are a “jerk.” Or “poop head.” After all, the “creator” of the “content” put his “labor” into it and didn’t “want it” to be pirated. And his “business model” depends on people “not pirating it.” 3
Or something. So you are a “poophead” if you mess up their unrealistic business model. [continue reading…]
A libertarian colleague asked me something like this:
Some time ago, I recall you wrote a piece on property rights where you argued (I think) that the inability to pay on a credit transaction was not a fraud because of the doctrine of impossibility. (I’m clearly paraphrasing in hopes that you will recognize the piece to which I’m referring.) I can’t seem to find it. (Perhaps it’s in the JLS or some reply to Van Dun.) 1
From this facebook post, referring to this Youtube video:
Also discussed at KOL361 | Libertarian Answer Man: Oaths: With Kent Wellington): Go to around 32 minutes; from the transcript: “Just like in the US, in the federal court system, all these guys that they call judges, the federal judges, the Supreme Court judges, they’re not really judges. They’re just state agents whose job is to interpret the words written down on paper by other state agents. That’s it. Their job is not to do justice, which is what a real judge does. A real judge tries to resolve a dispute between two parties based upon principles of justness and fairness. These federal judges can’t do that because their job is to interpret the Constitution and federal law, which are just positive enactments written down on paper by a bunch of elected bureaucrats and members of the state. So I don’t think they’re actual judges. They’re not actually doing law. What they’re interpreting is not law. (See Another Problem with Legislation: James Carter v. the Field Codes)
[Update: see the following comment adapted from an email to my new friend Nadia Nedzel 1 about related matters:
It’s a shame Hasnas’s small but important output is not easily accessible online, because I think his Myth piece could be improved by clarifying that his critique applies mostly to cases where the judge is interpreting artificial codes like statutes, legislation, and written constitutions (e.g. the US Constitution) and does not apply nearly so much to the normal judge in a true decentralized system whose mandate is to do justice (e.g. an arbitrator in a decentralized libertarian anarchist society, or even a judge or jurist or jurisconsult in a system like the Roman Law or English Common Law.
I was asked to make a guest appearance on SwanBitcoin’s Café Bitcoin Tuesday today Aug. 1, 2023), where we discussed law versus legislation, the impacts of sound money on social character, and related matters.
It was also posted on their podcast feed (iTunes; Spotify; google) and I include here my segment.
This article on Mises.org is disappointing (Daniel Lacalle, “Price Inflation Slowed to 3 Percent. That’s Still Far Too High,” Mises Wire (July 24, 2023). I guess it’s a blessing they seem to have disabled comments. Because this would be my comment:
This is not how Austrians think—at least, not Misesian-Rothbardians. The title gives it away: “Price Inflation Slowed to 3 Percent. That’s Still Far Too High.” As if there is a desired inflation rate—say, zero percent (in nominal terms).
And this line: “Inflation is caused by the constant increase in the quantity of currency in circulation well above real demand.” [continue reading…]
We spoke in the past, briefly, and I do appreciate that you’re open to emails. I’m not really expecting any kind of answer from this, just trying to bring to your attention a weird issue in the reasoning of a lot of pro-IP people that I’ve seen. AI has been a hot topic (though not the subject of this email), and in conversations with people about it I’ve seen the following come up time and time again. [continue reading…]
Last year Larken Rose and I appeared on Patrick Smith’s Disenthrall show, 
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