Exit, Voice, and Liberty

There’s been some interesting, and heated, debate in the libertarian blogosphere about the importance of democracy to freedom. Will Wilkinson suggests that since charter cities (and presumably seasteads) are undemocratic, they might allow rulers of authoritarian regimes to reap the benefits of high economic growth without giving their subjects “real freedom.” I think Will’s point [...]

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:
In [...]

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 [...]

The future is already here, and it’s reasonably evenly distributed

This video from 1981 (hat tip: Jerry Brito) shows the remarkable progress of information technology in recent years.

That which which seemed amazing yesterday is taken for granted today. Hyperland (1990) from Douglas Adams is even more remarkable in how exciting it made hypertext seem.
If we think back even further, someone 300 [...]

Real, No-Fooling Socialism [updated]

The Alliance Party says the Government should take ownership of the Lane Walker Rudkin (LWR) Factory in Christchurch to prevent a disastrous loss of hundreds of jobs.
Alliance Economic Development Spokesperson Quentin Findlay says it is vital that jobs and incomes are preserved to prevent mass unemployment in New Zealand.
He says the Government should take control [...]

Regulation Will Kill Millions

A good point from the Fight Aging blog:
I have said in the past that, from a pure research timeline perspective, by 2040 we’ll plausibly have all the technologies needed to repair and reverse aging. Unfortunately when we look beyond the laboratory, the field is strewn with roadblocks of legislation, slowing everything down. Even the time taken [...]

Government Investment in Broadband

The New Zealand Government is set to spend around $1.5 billion in an effort to improve New Zealand’s (relatively poor) broadband capacity by laying fibre cables. I worry it’s making the mistake the US Government narrowly avoided one hundred years ago:
“That it is not feasible and desirable at the present time for the Government to purchase, [...]

Postrel on Medical Innovation

Virginia Postrel has an excellent column in The Atlantic on the problems of centralized health systems. She discusses her experience with Herceptin, an effective but expensive breast cancer drug which has been the object of much controversy here in New Zealand. This nicely illustrates the frustration she expresses so brilliantly in The Future and its [...]

Quote of the Day

Government is one of the largest sectors of the world economy, yet it has benefited the least from technological development. The last major breakthrough was representative democracy, with the early adopter being the USA in 1776. Think about it – we get new car models every year, new electronic devices pop up every time we [...]