Analytical Anarchism

I’ve been remiss in not plugging this excellent collection of writing on the positive analysis of anarchism created by Michael Wiebe. There’s a list of published papers and books, and some working papers (including one by Eric and I). Here’s how Michael introduces the site: The purpose of Analytical Anarchism is to create an open forum [...]

Quote of the Day: Mises Edition

Another from the “I want to make a note of this for future reference and a blog post seems like the easiest way to do it” files. From Theory and History, chapter 7: In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporally and [...]

Power Corrupts Rational Thought

Wray Herbert reports research showing that a sense of power gives people the illusion of control over random events: One recent study may offer some insight into the connection between power and hubris and delusional thinking. Stanford University psychologist Nathanael Fast actually started off exploring the positive effects of power. His idea was that power [...]

Evolution, Entertainment, and the Socialist Calculation Debate

Eric Crampton is justly worried that the God-Game genre, typified by SimCity and Civilization, fills people with technocratic hubris, giving rise to the fatal conceit that a benevolent planner can actively improve the lives of citizens through direct intervention. He quotes a review of the new game Dawn of Discovery which complains that the complexity [...]

Customer-Owned Protection Agencies

I suggested yesterday that protection agencies which credibly commit to not joining any nascent cartel are likely to attract more customers than those which don’t, potentially nullifying Cowen and Sutter’s critique of market anarchism. One obvious possibility is customer ownership of protection agencies. Cowen makes this suggestion in the final paragraph of his 1992 paper: [...]

Protection Agency Cartels and Organizational Innovation

Every liberal worthy of the label is a philosophical anarchist. The presumption of liberty – i.e. the notion that everything is permissible unless shown otherwise, with the burden of proof resting with those who would restrict liberty – means that we should only resort to politics after all peaceful means of solving social conflict have [...]

Anarchist Prisons

David Skarbek’s recent paper Self-Governance in San Pedro Prison provides evidence for the possibility of orderly market anarchism and, when combined with past research, against that of orderly non-market anarchism. The abstract: The inmate-governed community in the Andersonville Civil War prison camp resulted in a state of violence and disorder. Past research argues that self-governance in prisons [...]

Holcombe on the Foundations of Welfare Economics

I haven’t yet read it, but this paper by Randall Holcombe in the latest Review of Austrian Economics, ”A reformulation of the foundations of welfare economics“ looks like a very important contribution. The abstract: Neoclassical welfare economics takes an outcome-oriented approach that uses Pareto optimality as its benchmark for welfare maximization. When one looks at the [...]

Nerdy History of Economic Thought/Metal Quote of the Day

Eric Crampton: Is it strange that I always hear the Sepultura lyrics as “War of Methodology” rather than “War for Territory”? Yes, Eric, but in a good way. (Read about the methodenstreit here)

Claudia Williamson on Informal Institutions

I haven’t yet read this paper from the latest Public Choice, but it looks very good. Williamson, C. 2009. ‘Informal institutions rule: institutional arrangements and economic performance.’ Public Choice 139(3), pp.  371-387. Abstract: Institutions are widely believed to be important for economic development. This paper attempts to contribute to our understanding of how institutions matter by [...]