Category: Aggregated

Colombia’s FARC becomes political party

I failed. I dropped off my kid at college the other day. I didn’t want her to go to college. In 2005 or 2006 I wrote a column in The Financial Times that nobody should go to college anymore. I then wrote a book, “40 Alternatives to College”. For a long time that book was the #1 seller on Amazon in the category of…”College”. A lot of people were upset at me about this. Everyone had an argument why college was a good thing and that kids should go. Then people said to me, “Well you went to college so … Continue reading →

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If they were at least consistent, you might be persuaded that Our Controllers were truly concerned about our safety. As opposed to using “safety” as the pretext for controlling us. Not infrequently, to the detriment of our safety. There are many examples to prove the point but the latest is the push for congressional approval of an exemption for automated cars from the federal safety requirements that apply to not-automated cars. Specifically, an exemption from the regs which forbid the sale of automated cars that lack back-up controls which a human driver can use to prevent the car from doing something manifestly unsafe because … Continue reading →

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America has two democracies, one political and the other free market. The concept of a political democracy dates back to Plato and his “Republic.” Ludwig von Mises and my mentor Dr. Bill Peterson (a student and colleague of Mises) wrote extensively about our market democracy. Both of these great men are now just a memory but their legacy defines America. The political class dominates the news, while the market provides the solutions chosen by our citizens. Plato described the political democracy as “full of disorder.” Today, the political democracy provides a spectacle of unpleasant news and often nastiness. Fights endure … Continue reading →

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Bret Stephens, who wrote “Hurricanes, Climate and the Capitalist Offset” for the New York Times, is an economic ignoramus. He opines: “Climate activists often claim that unchecked economic growth and the things that go with are principal causes of environmental destruction. In reality, growth is the great offset. It’s a big part of the reason why, despite our warming planet, mortality rates from storms have declined… Death rates from other natural disasters such as floods and droughts have fallen by … staggering percentages over the last century. “That’s because economic growth isn’t just a matter of parking lots paving over paradise. … Continue reading →

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Greece is a small beautiful country in the southeastern part of Europe, a place of jasmine, bougainvillea, mimosa, cypresses, olive trees, pines, oregano, sage, and thyme; sand, rock, and the bluest and cleanest water on earth. It was the birthplace of (selective) democracy, philosophy, Attic tragedy, poetry, history, and, of course, tyranny. The most beautiful and symmetrical edifice ever constructed still stands in the sacred rock that is the Acropolis, and Greece is the country that first embraced the power of reason and persuasion and sought the embodiment of the “nous.” Ancient Athens, the capital of this small country, produced … Continue reading →

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We here at Mental Floss are known for lusting after Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. We’d kill to buy a Wright house in Michigan or Minnesota, on a private island, by a waterfall, or anywhere else for that matter. Even if it wasn’t personally designed by the celebrated architect, really. But we have wondered why so many houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright—arguably the most famous American architect in history—are up for sale, sometimes for cheap. (One of his houses in Michigan went on the market for less than $500,000 in 2016.) As it turns out, his houses are really quite hard to sell, as we learned from The New York … Continue reading →

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You may have wondered from time to time if the whole concept of bad breath wasn’t invented by the modern makers of toothpaste and mouthwash. But while advertising has certainly heightened our attention and sensitivity to “halitosis,” the world’s earliest known medical writings (including those of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Greeks) mused on the problem of stinky breath and proposed cures — like sucking on sweets infused with frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon, using a toothbrush with bristles made of pig’s hair, and chewing on certain kinds of twigs. While the remedies have advanced, we’re still grappling with the same … Continue reading →

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Murray Rothbard has been gone more than 20 years now, his brilliance, wit, and irreplaceable insights taken from us far too soon. At home in New York City over a Christmas break from his teaching duties at the University of Nevada, Rothbard accompanied his beloved wife Joey to her optometrist appointment on a bitterly cold day. A few moments later, on January 7th 1995, he was gone — lost to heart failure at the age of 68. What he left behind was not only a grieving wife, countless friends and colleagues, and fans of his work around the world. He … Continue reading →

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The theme of an article and possibly a book (providing that I can find a suitable commercial press) is “The End of Triangulation and the American Conservative Movement.” My examination of this theme will draw on previous material that I’ve published on the transformations of American conservatism and will focus on the escalating divisions within the conservative movement and their implications. Since the 1980s, and arguably since the 1950s, conservative movement elites have built relations and, when possible, friendships with the Center Left, while marginalizing any hard or pesky Right that stands in its way professionally or programmatically. Thus from … Continue reading →

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There are lies damned lies and Central Bank Gold statistics. Total official global gold holdings are reported to be 33,000 tonnes. That is 19% of all the gold ever produced in the world. But how can anyone ever believe any of these figures. Because no central bank ever has a public audit of all its gold holdings. Since the gold belongs to the people, they have the right to know if the gold actually exists, especially since the gold reserves are backing the currency. WHY IS THE US GOLD NOT AUDITED? But no, the truth about these gold reserves are … Continue reading →

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The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve Peter Conti-Brown Princeton University Press, 2016xiv + 347 pages . Peter Conti-Brown, a legal historian who teaches at the Wharton School, would sharply dissent from Ron Paul’s wish to End the Fed. He never cites Mises or Rothbard, and the only Austrian work that he mentions, hidden away in an endnote, is Vera Smith’s The Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative. Nevertheless, Austrians will find Conti-Brown’s book of great value. He has, with considerable scholarship, exposed many grave problems with the Fed in a way that strengthens and supports the … Continue reading →

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“Everything meaningful that’s ever happened in the world, any change, any improvement comes about because of optimism. The pessimists don’t get anything done. They’re naysayers. You have to see the potential for change. And you’ve got to see it not in terms of the moment but in terms of the long view, the long haul.” — Mel Leventhal Mel Leventhal was involved in the civil rights movement in the deep South in the mid-1960’s. He was part of Martin Luther King’s inner circle, but because he was white in 1965, he was being pushed out of that circle by increasingly … Continue reading →

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