>Inadvertently Progressive Pirates

> Though I don’t much like the term “Progressive” given their actual history. Economist Peter Leeson has a study entitled The Invisible Hook: The Economics of Pirate Tolerance. He documents the relatively more racially inclusive environment of pirates vis-a-vis the “respectable” and official seafarers of the 17th and 18th centuries. This was not due to […]

>That Conservative Comfort with "Rule of Law" and Quietism

> Via the Booker Rising Blog, here is conservative Gregory Kane writing in the Baltimore Sun: Is it just me, or has anybody else noticed that America is becoming a society where it’s all the rage for people to pick and choose which laws they’ll obey and which ones they won’t? I was driving east […]

>Interesting Diversions

> Not in the way that Animal Cops: Houston is diverting, but in the way that coverage of ordinary-folk-vs-the-state stuff in foreign affairs di-verges within the libertarian movement. After reading another piece on the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood (and their co-religionists) in Egypt over at Anti-War.Com, and being reminded of an analysis of just […]

>A Compendium of Recent Anti-Anti-Chinese (Government?) Articles

> Justin Raimondo at Anti-War.Com: The hosting of the Olympic Games in Beijing is the focus of much pride in China, seen by the people as well as the ruling caste as symbolic of the nation’s arrival in modernity. As such, the worldwide protests and political posturing of preening politicians – from Pelosi to Nicolas […]

>Why Public Events in the US Make Europeans Tense

> Going to the movies today usually puts me in the presence of a couple hundred inconsiderate loudmouthed idiotic boors. It certainly doesn’t make me happy, which is why I stopped going.Indeed, almost any venture to any public event reminds one that rude, unthinking, lowbrow, crass and solipsistic are the defining adjectives of public life […]

>Public Opinion, Cuba and Cognitive Bias

> There isn’t nearly as much public opinion data in Cuba as there is in the US, but an anecdotal bit of evidence for the popularity of the Cuban economic system comes from blogger Michael Stastny, who writes that the people I talked with were actually quite happy with their situation (“We don’t earn much, […]

>Trade is Good

> Gazans enjoy breaking free from their economic isolation to enthusiastically buy the kinda junk I can procure in 5 minutes after a trip to the gas station across the street. Notice the scattered examples of basic microeconomics in the story linked, including price drops on cigarettes in Gaza City due to sudden competition, as […]

>Film: Meeting Resistance

> I attended a screening of the film at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland a week ago tonight. It was, as they say, “eye opening”. My interest in this film as opposed to all the other films on the war and occupation of Iraq, such as No End in Sight and Gunner Palace, is […]

>Steve Horwitz on the Free Market and GLBT Identity

>At the most basic level, as historian of sexuality John D’Emilio has argued, capitalism created gay and lesbian identity. By separating earning income from the family, industrialization and capitalism enabled people to survive economically outside of the family. This created both the “singles culture” of the 20th century but also enabled homosexuals to adopt the […]

>City of Widows and the Rebuke to Colonial Feminism

> The book’s author is Haifa Zangana, former prisoner of Saddam Hussein. Her imprisonment is especially worth noting, as she’s critical of the idea that being on Saddam’s hit list grants one moral legitimacy in supporting US plans to brutalize and occupy foreign populations. Zangana takes fellow prisoner Esra Naama to task for assuming precisely […]