Spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos
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3 episodes with Spontaneous order
4 episodes with Spontaneous order
4 episodes with Spontaneous order
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3 episodes with Spontaneous order
3 episodes with Spontaneous order
2 episodes with Spontaneous order
2 episodes with Spontaneous order
2 episodes with Spontaneous order
Send us a text Today, I am excited to host Anna Claire Flowers to discuss F. A. Hayek and the mesocosmos. The mesocosmos is a fancy way to describe all the social groupings on the spectrum between the extremes of individualism and society. Think families, neighborhoods, farmers markets, firms, and universities. We talk about the importance of characterizing this missing middle piece of social organization and how it can resolve issues than a single individual or government can. She characterizes some of the important aspects of these associations for us. We talk about the family's role in particular, and what benefits it brings to individuals and society. Anna Claire Flowers is pursuing a PhD in Economics from George Mason University. She is a PhD Fellow with the Mercatus Center and a Graduate Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics for 2024-2025. Want to explore more?Bruce Caldwell on Hayek: A Life, a Great Antidote podcast.Amy Willis, Could Too Much Division of Labor be Bad? at Speaking of Smith.Dan Klein on Hayek and the Band Man, a Great Antidote podcast.Viviana Zelizer on Money and Intimacy, an EconTalk podcast. Profile in Liberty, Friedrich A. Hayek, at Econlib.Never miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Send us a textHow do you teach about a man who does not fit neatly into a box? Hayek is one such man, and today, we tackle the difficult task of putting him in a box. We conclude that we cannot put someone like F. A. Hayek into boxes such as “economist” or “philosopher” or “political theorist”, because he did it all. How and when do you teach the ideas of a man who did it all? I'm excited to welcome Tawni Hunt Ferrarini to the podcast today to talk to us about teaching Hayek and his most important ideas. Ferrarini is a co-author of Common Sense Economics and an economic educator worldwide. We go through multiple ideas of in-class examples and places his thought could be applied in the context of modern education. Keep listening to hear me talk about how I, Pencil is scary. Want to explore more?Explore the Common Sense Economics website.Tawni Hunt Ferrarini, Real Life Economics: Rational or Complex, at EconTalk.Ryan Yonk on the China Dilemma, a Great Antidote podcast.Come explore Hayek with us in these two upcoming Online Programs led by Dr. Ferrarini:A Timeless [asynchronous] discussion, October 28-November 3 in the LF Portal.Dive Deep into Hayek's "Use of Knowledge in Society," a one session Virtual Reading Group, November 13th.Never miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Send us a textThe title of this episode might confuse you: what on earth do Adam Smith and F. A. Hayek have to say about social justice? A surprising amount, given how much we talk about it!Smith makes a big point of critiquing men of pride and vanity. What happens when those ultimately negative aspects of humanity go too far, into the territory of what he calls “domineering”? What happens when small acts of domination are aggregated throughout a society? So here we are, talking about slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement, through the lens of Hayek and Adam Smith. Our tour guide on this perilous journey towards the implementation and understanding of justice is the wonderful Jacob Levy. Levy is the Tomlinson Professor of Political Theory at McGill University. He is also the coordinator of the research group on Constitutional Studies at McGill. Want to explore more?Jacob Levy, Rationalism, Pluralism, and the History of Liberal Ideas, a Liberty Matters symposium at the Online Library of Liberty. Don Boudreaux on the Essential Hayek, a Great Antidote podcast.Steven Horwitz, Spontaneous Order in Adam Smith, at AdamSmithWorks.Dan Klein on Adam Smith's Justice, a Great Antidote podcast.Rosolino Candela, Private Property and Social Justice: Complements or Substitutes? at Econlib.Never miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Jacob Kim-Anarcho-Capitalism & Race Theory Jacob's mother is from North Korea & his father is from South Korea. After the Communists took over his mother's home, she walked, carrying her sister to the south. His whole life, he has learned about communism. That may be what drove him to get his Ph.D., become a preacher & an Anarcho-capitalist. While anarchy frequently thought of as a negative and totally lawless type of government, Jacob describes his beliefs as a “Spontaneous Order.” The less government you have, the more freedom you have and the more responsibility you need to take. He taught Racial Theory (Probably not in the way you would think) as a professor at Temple University & says race is a general characterization based on a single characteristic. Racism is not really the problem. The real problem is hypocrisy. Avoid that and anything coercive. Conformity is boring! Check out his podcast & social media here: https://x.com/SubjectiveProf https://rumble.com/user/SubjectiveProfessor https://www.youtube.com/@subjectiveProfessor https://open.spotify.com/show/5rSmbXkCSAxVT1dmQj1YNf
Send us a textThe month of October 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of F. A. Hayek winning the Nobel Prize. Winning such a prize is obviously a big deal, but someone wins one every year, so what's the big deal about this guy? Well. Hayek's contributions to the field of economics are significant because they spoke to more than simply economics. Spontaneous order, price signals as information, and the pretense of knowledge all might come to mind, but they might not. (Maybe you're new to this! If so, helloooo there!) These concepts branch into philosophy, social structure, and the nature of the human mind. Stick with us to learn the depths and beauty of Hayekian thought, in the first of this series! Want to explore more?Profile in Liberty: Friedrich A. Hayek, at Econlib.Don Boudreaux on Reading Hayek, an EconTalk podcast.Elaine Sternberg, The Power and Pervasiveness of Spontaneous Order, at Econlib.Nicholas Wapshott on Keynes and Hayek, an EconTalk podcast.Hayek and Spontaneous Orders, at the Online Library of Liberty.Never miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Alex speaks with Ádám Lovász about the concept of spontaneous order, examining its philosophical roots in thinkers like Hayek and exploring its applications beyond human societies, including ecosystems and insect colonies, as well as its implications for understanding the limitations of technocratic control in both markets and ecological systems. References Adam's Author Page on Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.ca/stores/author/B00LXFHXN8/about?ingress=0&visitId=5dbd96f1-456d-41f2-a1e7-6d59eeaf6ca9&ref_=ap_rdr "The Constitution of Liberty" by Friedrich Hayek Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Constitution-Liberty-Friedrich-Hayek/dp/0226320847 "The Sensory Order" by Friedrich Hayek Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Sensory-Order-Friedrich-Hayek/dp/0226320944 "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Wealth-Nations-Adam-Smith/dp/1505577128 "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" by Robert Nozick Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Anarchy-State-Utopia-Robert-Nozick/dp/0465097200 "Stigmergy and the Role of Insect Societies in Complex Systems" by Leslie Marsh Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Stigmergy-Insect-Societies-Complex-Systems/dp/XXXXX "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320553 Thanks to our patrons including: Amy Willis, Kris Rondolo, and Christopher McDonald. To become a patron, go to patreon.com/curioustask
He's an elder statesman in the worlds of journalism, policy and economics in India -- and he takes the long view. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha joins Amit Varma in episode 388 of The Seen and the Unseen to talk about his life and learnings. (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha on Twitter, Mint and Artha Global. 2. The Rise of India -- NIranjan Rajadhyaksha. 3. Niranjan Rajadhyaksha interviewed in Marathi by Think Bank: Part 1. Part 2. 4. MV Rajadhyaksha and Vijaya Rajadhyaksha. 5. The Times of India obituary of MV Rajadhyaksha. 6. Adventures of a Bystander -- Peter F Drucker. 7. The Theory of Moral Sentiments -- Adam Smith's book that contains the concept of the impartial spectator. 8. The Impartial Spectator columns by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha and Shruti Rajagopalan. 9. Ratatouille -- Brad Bird. 10. The Overton Window. 11. John Maynard Keynes on Alfred Marshall. 12. The Rooted Cosmopolitanism of Sugata Srinivasaraju — Episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen. 13. The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual -- Ramachandra Guha. 14. Understanding India Through Its Languages — Episode 232 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Peggy Mohan). 15. Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages — Peggy Mohan. 16. The Heckman Equation -- a website based on James Heckman's work. 17. Select episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Suyash Rai (1, 2) and Rahul Verma (1, 2). 18. Stri Purush Tulana by Tarabai Shinde on Amazon and Wikipedia. 19. Kalyanche Nishwas by Vibhavari Shirurkar (Malati Bedekar) on Amazon and Wikipedia. 20. Makers of Modern India -- Ramachandra Guha. 21. Simone de Beauvoir (Wikipedia, Britannica, Amazon) and Germaine Greer (Wikipedia, Britannica, Amazon). 22. Gopal Ganesh Agarkar's essay on education for girls. 23. The omnibus volume of BR Nanda's biographies of Gokhale, Gandhi and Nehru. 24. The Adda at the End of the Universe — Episode 309 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vikram Sathaye and Roshan Abbas). 25. This Be The Verse — Philip Larkin. 26. Rohit Lamba Will Never Be Bezubaan -- Episode 378 of The Seen and the Unseen. 27. Volga Se Ganga (Hindi) (English) -- Rahul Sankritayan. 28. In Service of the Republic — Vijay Kelkar & Ajay Shah. 29. Turning Over the Pebbles: A Life in Cricket and in the Mind -- Mike Brearley. 30. Slow Horses (book one of Slough House) -- Mick Herron. 31. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 -- Tony Judt. 32. On Warne -- Gideon Haigh. 33. The Essential Keynes -- John Maynard Keynes. 34. The Age of Uncertainty — John Kenneth Galbraith. 35. Asian Drama -- Gunnar Myrdal. 36. Aneesh Pradhan on Spotify, Amazon, Instagram, Twitter and his own website. 37. Malini Goyal is the Curious One — Episode 377 of The Seen and the Unseen. 38. The UNIX Episode -- Episode 32 of Everything is Everything. 39. The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development -- Michael Kremer. 40. Why Abhijit Banerjee Had to Go Abroad to Achieve Glory -- Amit Varma. 41. Why Talent Comes in Clusters -- Episode 8 of Everything is Everything. 42. The Dark Knight Rises -- Christopher Nolan. 43. Thinking it Through -- The archives of Amit Varma's column for Mint. 44. Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker -- Ved Mehta. 45. Videhi -- Vijaya Rajadhyaksha. 46. Select pieces on the relationship between Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish: 1, 2, 3, 4. 47. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy -- Joseph Schumpeter. 48. Maharashtra Politics Unscrambled — Episode 151 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Sujata Anandan). 49. Complaint Resolution Systems: Experimental Evidence from Rural India -- Chinmaya Kumar and MR Sharan. 50. Parkinson's Law — C Northcote Parkinson. 51. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah). 52. The Life and Times of Montek Singh Ahluwalia — Episode 285 of The Seen and the Unseen. 53. The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao — Episode 283 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati). 54. The Life and Times of KP Krishnan — Episode 355 of The Seen and the Unseen. 55. Lant Pritchett Is on Team Prosperity — Episode 379 of The Seen and the Unseen. 56. The Reformers — Episode 28 of Everything is Everything. 57. The Tragedy of Our Farm Bills — Episode 211 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ajay Shah). 58. Public Choice Theory Explains SO MUCH -- Episode 33 of Everything is Everything. 59. The Logic of Collective Action — Mancur Olson. 60. Ashutosh Salil and the Challenge of Change — Episode 312 of The Seen and the Unseen. 61. Rational Ignorance. 62. The State of Our Farmers — Ep 86 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Gunvant Patil, in Hindi). 63. India's Agriculture Crisis — Ep 140 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Barun Mitra & Kumar Anand). 64. The Indian State Is the Greatest Enemy of the Indian Farmer — Amit Varma. 65. The Worldly Philosophers -- Robert Heilbroner. 66. The Clash of Economic Ideas — Lawrence H White. 67. Capital-Labor Substitution and Economic Efficiency -- Kenneth Arrow, Hollis Chenery, Bagicha Singh Minhas and Robert Solow. 68. Room 666 -- Wim Wenders. 69. Laapataa Ladies -- Kiran Rao. 70. The Brave New Future of Electricity -- Episode 40 of Everything is Everything. 71. What I, as a development economist, have been actively “for” — Lant Pritchett. 72. National Development Delivers: And How! And How? — Lant Pritchett. 73. Economic growth is enough and only economic growth is enough — Lant Pritchett with Addison Lewis. 74. Smoke and Ashes -- Amitav Ghosh. 75. Sata Uttarachi Kahani -- GP Pradhan. 76. Gopal Ganesh Agarkar and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. 77. Collections of VD Savarkar's Marathi essays: 1, 2. 78. Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva -- Janaki Bakhle. 79. Savarkar Te BJP -- SH Deshpande. 80. Sarvakarancha Buddhiwad Ani Hindutvawad -- Sheshrao More. 81. Swatantryaveer Savarkar Ek Rahasya -- DN Gokhale. 82. Shodh Savarkarancha -- YD Phadke. 83. The Taking of Pelham 123 -- Tony Scott. 84. Sriram Raghavan (IMDb) (Wikipedia) and Vijay Anand (IMDb) (Wikipedia). 85. Manorama Six Feet Under -- Navdeep Singh. 86. Agatha Christie and Frederick Forsyth on Amazon. 87. Salil Chowdhury and RD Burman on Spotify. 88. Haikyu -- Haruichi Furudate. 89. Pramit Bhattacharya Believes in Just One Ism — Episode 256 of The Seen and the Unseen. 90. Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister — Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay. 91. Dilip José Abreu: an elegant and creative economist — Rohit Lamba. Niranjan would like to inform listeners that Spontaneous Order would be translated to Marathi as उत्सफूर्त व्यवस्था. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Amit's newsletter is active again. Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new video podcast. Check out Everything is Everything on YouTube. Check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: ‘The Impartial Spectator' by Simahina.
F.A. Hayek coined the term spontaneous order to point out that the prosperous societies are also societies where people are free to pursue their own goals. The result is, ironically, harmony that cannot come about through central state planning.Original Article: The Intellectual Humility of the Spontaneous Order
F.A. Hayek coined the term spontaneous order to point out that the prosperous societies are also societies where people are free to pursue their own goals. The result is, ironically, harmony that cannot come about through central state planning.Original Article: The Intellectual Humility of the Spontaneous Order
This episode brings Austrian economics into the gender identity discussion. We get into a lot of messy and fascinating questions about gender, identity, and social structures. Read the paper here: https://cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/malamet_novak_ct_vol11_iss11_12_epub.pdf Mikayla Novak is senior fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She is the author of Inequality: An Entangled Political Economy Perspective (2018) and Freedom in Contention: Social Movements and Liberal Political Economy (2021). Her research work has been published in a range of academic journals, including Research Policy, Constitutional Political Economy, Review of Austrian Economics, Journal of Institutional Economics, and Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice. Mikayla's research interests include Austrian and evolutionary economics, public choice, entangled political economy, economic sociology, public finance, and regulatory economics. And listeners will recognize Akiva Malamet, a returning guest to the show. Akiva previously appeared on our June 2020 episode of Mutual Exchange Radio to discuss his work on Nationalism and Identity Formation. He is a contributing editor at Unpopulist and an MA candidate at Queens University, and a long-time friend of C4SS.
Sabine speaks with Akiva Malamet and Mikayla Novak about the effects of market forces on gender as a social construct, the unlikely pairing of free markets and gender in an age of socialist feminist theory, and their recent co-authored article in Cosmos + Taxis. Episode Notes: "Gender as a Discovery Process: Social Construction, Markets, and Gender" Akiva Malamet and Mikayla Novak https://cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/malamet_novak_ct_vol11_iss11_12_epub.pdf Randall Holcombe on Spontaneous Order: https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095212458270 David Pozen "We Are All Entrepreneurs Now": https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1044021 Immanuel Kant first introduces the concepts of "phenomena" and "noumena" in his critical philosophy, particularly in his work titled "Critique of Pure Reason" (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), which was first published in 1781. Isreal Kirzner on Entrepreneurship: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Kirzner.html Jason Kuznicki "Human, Transhuman, Transgender.": https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/human-transhuman-transgender
The open protocols on the internet would seem to create chaos, but it turns out that they produce the opposite results, encouraging a digital spontaneous order. Original Article: "Breaking Free: How Open Protocols Foster Entrepreneurship, Spontaneous Order, and Individual Sovereignty"
The open protocols on the internet would seem to create chaos, but it turns out that they produce the opposite results, encouraging a digital spontaneous order. Original Article: "Breaking Free: How Open Protocols Foster Entrepreneurship, Spontaneous Order, and Individual Sovereignty"
More than two thousand years ago, the ancient Chinese Tao presented ideas that are reflected in F.A. Hayek's concept of spontaneous order. Original Article: "The Tao and the Synergy of the Spontaneous Order"
More than two thousand years ago, the ancient Chinese Tao presented ideas that are reflected in F.A. Hayek's concept of spontaneous order. Original Article: "The Tao and the Synergy of the Spontaneous Order"
In God's plan to reveal His rule and reign to an unbelieving world, every one of His people plays a part.
The Way the World Works: A Tuttle Twins Podcast for Families
Fractals are patterns in nature that can been seen in many places: nature, plants, trees, rivers, even within our own bodies! Ronni and Brittany talk about how fractals and fractal systems in society can be seen as examples of emergent, or spontaneous, order.
One place a price system manifests itself is the sports betting markets. The results are surprisingly accurate. Original Article: "Sports Betting and Spontaneous Order" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.
One place a price system manifests itself is the sports betting markets. The results are surprisingly accurate. Original Article: "Sports Betting and Spontaneous Order" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.
In this episode of MER, Alex McHugh interview Gus diZerega on his work around democracy as a spontaneous order. Gus is a retired professor with a Ph.D in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is now an independent scholar and has been involved in an ongoing back and forth on libertarianism with our own Roderick Long. Read more about Gus diZerega at www.dizerega.com. Reading list: "Democracies are Spontaneous Orders, not States, and Why It is Important," Cosmos + Taxis, [cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/ct_vol7_iss3_4_dizerega.pdf] "Outgrowing Methodological Individualism: Emergence, spontaneous orders, and civil society," Cosmos + Taxis, [cosmosandtaxis.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/dizerega_ct_vol9_iss_7_8.pdf] "Spontaneous Order and Liberalism's Complex Relation to Democracy," The Independent Review, [www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=849] Ours: The Case For Universal Property, Peter Barnes [peter-barnes.org/book/ours-the-case-for-universal-property/] "Turning the Tables: The Pathologies and Unrealized Promise of Libertarianism," Molinari Review, [praxeology.net/MR1-1-S16-DIZEREGA.pdf]
This episode is also available as a blog post: http://donnyferguson.com/2017/03/21/how-spontaneous-order-keeps-houston-affordable/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/donny-ferguson/message
This episode is also available as a blog post: http://donnyferguson.com/2017/05/09/adam-ferguson-and-the-spontaneous-order-of-society/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/donny-ferguson/message
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 339. This is an audio version of my Foreword to Chase Rachels' A Spontaneous Order, narrated by Graham Wright. https://youtu.be/aRSLyEukURs
Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 339. This is an audio version of my Foreword to Chase Rachels' A Spontaneous Order, narrated by Graham Wright. https://youtu.be/aRSLyEukURs
David Clayton, Fr Brad Elliot OP, Dr. Michel Accad, and Charlie Deist discuss the rediscovered ideas of Ivan Illich, who died 15 years ago, and in particular an essay from a collection called Shadow Work. His essay describes how the imposition of Castilian as the national language of Spain by Queen Isabella, became a tool of the state for control of the people. We also show how the development of communication through the printing press created a desire to control its use and has parallels today in how big institutions and governments are trying to control the flow of information through the internet. Permalink
SAMPLER & SANS REPROCHES†(Radio Transmission)Playlist N∞ 1210... GALAXIE RADIO 95.3FMLundi 08 Mars 2021 - Horaire : 20:00 >> 22:00EBM - SYNTHWAVE - INDUSTRIAL & RELATED MUSICGALAXIE RADIO 95.3FM www.galaxieradio.fr----------------------------------------->[ S&SR Selection de la semaine... FATIMA YAMAHA "Spontaneous Order" (Magnetron Music) ] < Artiste - Titre - Version - Format - Production - Label > FATIMA YAMAHA "Unwashed" DIG LP: Spontaneous Order (Magnetron Music) PYRROLINE "What Might Have Been" DIG LP: Struggling (Electro Aggression Records) CPX "My Sound" DIG EP: Moog On The Moon (Arcade Pony Records) PETE CRANE "Tear You Apart" DIG EP: XV (Infacted Recordings) AUDIO WAR "Warhead" DIG EP: Warhead (Autoproduction) THE PRODIGY "Voodoo People" CD: Their Law - The Singles 1990-2005 (XL Recordings) AUDIO WAR "Take Control" DIG EP: Warhead (Autoproduction) K-NITRATE "Human Mask" DIG LP: Kiloton Endgame (Autoproduction) LEGOWELT "Disco Rout (Original)" DCD V/A: Solid Sounds Anno 2003 Volume 01 (541 / N.E.W.S.) SHINY DARKNESS "X-ray" DIG SINGLE: X-RAY (Autoproduction) SCARLET SOHO "What You Need" DCD: Programmed To Perfection - Best Of & Rareties (Scentair) SOLAR FAKE "This pretty life" DCD: Enjoy Dystopia (Out Of Line) FATIMA YAMAHA "We Are Drops" DIG LP: Spontaneous Order (Magnetron Music) GLOK "Cloud Cover (Andrew Weatherall Remix)" DIG EP: Citadel EP (Bytes) MARTIN GORE "Howler" DIG EP: The Third Chimpanzee EP (Mute) SIGNAL~BRUIT "Nuit Blanche" VINYL LP: HyperborÈe (productionB) MENTALLO & THE FIXER "Sacrilege" DIG V/A: Matrix Downloaded 010 (Alfa Matrix) SPK "Metal Dance (7" Version)" VINYL 7": Metal Dance (Desire Records) SOFT KILL "Whirl" VINYL LP: Choke (Profound Lore Records) GUSGUS with V÷K "Higher" DIG SINGLE: Higher (Oroom) THE MAXX "Cocaine (Acid Mix)" VINYL EP: (The Biggest Illegal Export) Cocaine (BCM Records) BOY HARSHER "Pain (Edit)" VINYL EP: Pain II (Nude Club Records) ANTIPOLE "Memorial Waves (feat. Paris Alexander & Eirene) [Vogue.Noir Remix] DIG LP: Perspectives II(Autoproduction) ALIEN SKIN "She Looks a Lot Like Martin Gore from 1984" CD: New Romance: 1984 (ScentAir Records) PROMO THANKS TO : MAGNETRON MUSIC (Rick Bakker), ELECTRO AGGRESSION RECORDS (Nader Moumneh), HOTTWERK MEDIA PR. (Tony Pontius), CPX CAPOCROCE (Danilo), INFACTED RECORDINGS (Torben Schmidt), AUDIO WAR / K-NITRATE (Christian Weber & Graham Rayner), SHINY DARKNESS (Sébastien Deruwez), SCARLET SOHO (James Knights), SCENTAIR RECORDS (Vladimir Romanov), OUT OF LINE (Iris), RANSOM NOTE RECORDS (Aiden D'Araujo), productionB (Member U 0176), ANTIPOLE (Karl Morten Dahl) ...
This newsletter is really a weekly public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration courtesy the good folks at Ad-Auris. If you have any feedback, please send it to us. India Policy Watch #1: Consumption And The Fable Of BeesInsights on burning policy issues in India— RSJ‘The pandemic has shown us what is truly important in our lives.’‘We learnt to go slow and consume only that we need during the lockdown. That’s one lesson we should follow beyond the pandemic.’‘The earth is healing as the pandemic has forced us to slow down our lives and reduce our greed.’ Every couple of weeks I come across a column that argues on similar lines as above since the pandemic began. I guess we have a great desire to search for a silver lining in the bleakest of scenarios. But this is exactly the kind of silver lining we should avoid. The idea we learn to reduce consumption so the earth can sustain our load doesn’t have any underlying logic. Worse, such reduction will harm the vulnerable and the poor the most. But, hey, good intentions are all that matter, right?Any discussion on consumption as a vice takes me back to Mandeville and his work ‘The Fable of Bees’ which has a deserving claim of being among the most provocative and counter-intuitive texts of all time. Published in the early 18th century, it’s alternative title, Private Vices, Public(k) Benefits establishes its central thesis upfront. The book is in three parts. The first part is a poem, The Grumbling Hive, which is followed by an essay discussing the poem. The book concludes with an essay An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue that lays out his defence of vice. This essay, as we will soon see, is a proto-text for different schools of economic and moral philosophy that emerged during and after the age of enlightenment.The Wages Of VirtueThe Grumbling Hive is a simple poem of uncertain literary merit. There’s a hive of bees that live in ‘luxury and ease’ while giving virtue, moderation and restraint a short shift. Instead of being happy with this prosperity, the bees question their lack of morality and wonder (or grumble) if there wasn’t a more honest way to lead their lives. Some kind of divine power grants them their wish and their hearts are filled with virtue now. This turn to an ethical hive however comes at the cost of prosperity. Ease was a vice now, temperance a virtue and the industry that emerged from the bees competing with one another disappeared since the virtuous bees didn’t bother any further with competition. This lack of industry meant a fall in prosperity. Many thousand bees lost their lives, and society started collapsing. The bees weren’t deterred. They flew into a hollow tree that suited their new lifestyle of restraint. They were content being poor but honest. Mandeville questions the social benefit of this trade-off. What good is this virtuous life which keeps everyone poor? This leads him to make the almost blasphemous claim that vice is good so long as it is within bounds of justice. Not just that he also bats for people as a resource. People are not a burden for society. This was incendiary material then. And I guess, even now. He wrote:So Vice is beneficial found, When it’s by Justice lopt and bound; Nay, where the People would be great, As necessary to the State, As Hunger is to make ’em eat.And after having set the Thames on fire, he concludes the poem with these famous lines:Bare Virtue can’t make Nations live In Splendor; they, that would revive A Golden Age, must be as free, For Acorns, as for Honesty.With this, Mandeville earned his lifelong notoriety as a libertine of dubious morality. It didn’t bother him and his later defence of thievery and prostitution as public good suggests it possibly fuelled his desire to be more outrageous.Private Vice, Public BenefitIn his essay ‘An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue’, Mandeville explains the paradox of private vice and public benefit further. Mandeville makes three key arguments:A virtuous act is one that’s unselfish and driven by reason. Acts that are selfish and involve raw passions were vices. Mandeville goes about looking for virtuous acts in society and draws a blank. However, he finds there are acts beneficial to the society that don’t qualify as virtues. He concludes individuals might pursue their self-interest (vice) but on an aggregated basis this might be creating a societal good. For example, members of a society might quarrel among each other pursuing their interest, but that quarrel generates employment for lawyers, clerks and judges. If they were to turn virtuous, this public benefit would disappear.The natural state of man (the term used in the text which we will use here) was to be selfish. The individual was a ‘fallen man’ who was selfish and sought pleasure only for himself. This vice was the foundation of the society and all social virtues emerged from self-interest. Vice is good. To Mandeville, virtue was a state of denial of this natural state. Even virtue that man displays is rooted in vice. A man acts with virtue for two reasons –either to satisfy his ego (vanity) of being seen as virtuous by the society or to not offend the ego of his peers. This is a facade to cover the underlying greed or selfish motives that give him private pleasure. These days we might call it virtue signalling. This cynical take on man and society didn’t earn him friends. The act of calling virtue a facade was unacceptable in a society whose foundation was the Christian notion of virtue. The idea that a human couldn’t do a virtuous act without self-denial negated the concept of a religious man being a superior person who could rise above primal passions. There were multiple attacks on The Fable of Bees from moral and political philosophers of the time. Yet the text survived for two reasons. One, in its belief that the society is held together by individual acts of self-interest of many and not by some kind of faith in the divine, it was the first attempt at separating social science from the clutches of theology. This was already achieved in natural sciences with scientists like Galileo, Copernicus and Newton challenging religious orthodoxies through the scientific method. The time was ripe for questioning the role of religion in social sciences too. Two, there was something liberating about a text that didn’t speak about how humans should be. Instead, it was a realist’s view of how humans behave in nature and that behaviour at an aggregated level produces social benefits. This was a powerful insight that advocated individual liberty.The Long Shadow Of The FableThe Fable of Bees served as inspiration for a wide range of philosophers over the course of the next two centuries. Hume agreed with the basic premise of Mandeville that the sense of morality or virtuousness in a man occurs only in a community or a society through aggregated acts. Hobbes drew from Mandeville on self-interest being the primary motivation for human action. Adam Smith was inspired by the notion of aggregated self-interest producing social good though he disagreed with Mandeville by bringing in the role of sympathy. He also thought vanity alone wasn’t the reason people acted with virtue. There was a desire for true glory too. As Smith wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments:“It is the great fallacy of Dr. Mandeville's book to represent every passion as wholly vicious, which is so in any degree and in any direction. It is thus that he treats everything as vanity which has any reference, either to what are, or to what ought to be the sentiments of others: and it is by means of this sophistry, that he establishes his favourite conclusion, that private vices are public benefits.”Yet Smith accepts there is a kernel of truth in Mandeville’s core assertion:“But how destructive soever this system may appear, it could never have imposed upon so great a number of persons, nor have occasioned so general an alarm among those who are the friends of better principles, had it not in some respects bordered upon the truth.” (emphasis ours)While the fable of bees influenced Smith and his methodological individualism, it also left a mark on Rousseau and the French collectivists who followed him. Rousseau agreed with Mandeville on the lack of social or public-spiritedness in man in the natural state. However, Rousseau introduced ‘pity’ or a “natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being and particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death” as natural sentiment within a man. This pity overrode self-interest and became the reason for other virtues.It isn’t too difficult to see how Mandeville’s philosophy became the founding text for the economic theory based on the primacy of individual liberty and limited intervention of the state. If individual acts of self-interest could lead to social good, what was the need for any intervention by anyone? This was the argument of Friedrich von Hayek who took the fable of bees as the first text that advocated ‘spontaneous order’. He wrote:“It was through asking how things would have developed if no deliberate actions of legislation had ever interfered that successively all the problems of social and particularly economic theory emerged. There can be little question that the author to whom more than any other this is due was Bernard Mandeville.” In a similar vein, Ludwig von Mises (Hayek’s peer from the Austrian school) explained, in Theory and History (1957):“Only in the Age of Enlightenment did some eminent philosophers . . .inaugurate a new social philosophy . . . They looked upon human events from the point of view of the ends aimed at by acting men, instead of from the point of view of the plans ascribed to God or nature . . .“Bernard Mandeville in his Fable of the Bees tried to discredit this doctrine. He pointed out that self-interest and the desire for material well-being, commonly stigmatized as vices, are in fact the incentives whose operation makes for welfare, prosperity, and civilization.”While Hayek and Mises were crediting Mandeville for being the first to articulate spontaneous order, their great intellectual rival, Keynes, was finding merits in the fable of bees too. Keynes’ Paradox of Thrift is the intellectual progeny of the Private Vice, Public Virtue paradox:“For although the amount of his own saving is unlikely to have any significant influence on his own income, the reactions of the amount of his consumption on the incomes of others makes it impossible for all individuals simultaneously to save any given sums. Every such attempt to save more by reducing consumption will so affect incomes that the attempt necessarily defeats itself. It is, of course, just as impossible for the community as a whole to save less than the amount of current investment, since the attempt to do so will necessarily raise incomes to a level at which the sums which individuals choose to save add up to a figure exactly equal to the amount of investment.” The state could get itself out of a recession by stimulating demand and increasing consumption while it could dig itself into a bigger hole by reducing consumption. Keynes credits Mandeville’s work in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money for highlighting consumption (aggregate demand) as the principal engine for economic prosperity. It is possible Mandeville wasn’t aware of the profound implications of his fable when he wrote it. He was possibly baiting the hypocrites of the society of his time who hectored others to live in virtue while committing vices themselves. It is also likely he was being ridiculous for the sake of infamy since he seemed to enjoy riling up people. But given his influence on the entire spectrum of philosophical and economic thought – from individualism to collectivism and from statism to laissez faire – I’m inclined to side with Adam Smith. Mandeville’s fable borders on a fundamental truth – private vices may lead to public good.A Framework a Week: A COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment Strategy for IndiaTools for thinking public policy— Pranay KotasthaneWhat should India’s approach be to deploying a COVID-19 vaccine? Once a vaccine candidate passes all clinical trial stages, the sequencing problem is non-trivial for a country of India’s size and income levels. Consider this: India’s rather successful and extensive Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) vaccinates about 2.9 crore mothers (and 2.6 crore infants) annually whereas the COVID-19 vaccine has to reach nearly 100 crore people as soon as possible — a problem 30 times bigger than what the UIP manages.Led by my colleague Shambhavi Naik, we have a reaseach document out that develops a framework for vaccine deployment. It breaks down the challenge into four parts:(Source: Shambhavi Naik et al, A COVID-19 vaccine deployment strategy for India. Takshashila Discussion SlideDoc, September 2020)Estimate Need: Initially, prioritise a really small set of recipients initially based on how essential the service they provide is for managing the pandemic. Once that’s out of the way, randomisation works better than sequencing recipients based on age, comorbidity prevalence, or other such demographic indicators.Secure Vaccine Supply: At our current production capacity, vaccinating 80% of the population will require 20 months. Which means India will need to source vaccines from other companies/countries and incentivise increased manufacturing in India. A transparent model contract specifying terms of technology transfer and manufacturing partnerships to build manufacturer and public confidence.Choose Delivery Channel: Use the Election Commission of India machinery to get the vaccine booths to the people in a mission mode operation. The state governments’ public health administration will coordinate the vaccine administration. Track Vaccine Distribution: A separate database, enabled by Aadhaar and/or election ink as an identifier, to track vaccine distribution and adverse events.Do give the document a read and send in your suggestions. This problem needs all hands on deck. Not a PolicyWTF: The Art of Letting GoThis section looks at egregious public policies. Policies that make you go: WTF, Did that really happen?— Pranay KotasthaneIn this section, we are on the lookout for egregious policies. Such policies are not difficult to find. Very rarely though, the reverse happens. Governments spring up a surprise on us by bringing in pro-market reforms. Here are two such cases from the recent past. Neither can be classified as a policy success. They are at best first steps in the right direction, requiring further work. EV Minus BatteryOn August 12, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways notified that state governments allow registration of electric vehicles without pre-fitted batteries. Since batteries make up 30-40% of an EV’s cost, this move is intended to bring down up-front costs for consumers.This is a positive move. Unbundling the battery from the vehicle creates new market opportunities. A consumer can potentially register an EV from a vehicle manufacturer but get the vehicle battery from an energy management company. Energy management companies can come up with new models for both battery swapping or for the charging infrastructure. Of course, this move has made the incumbent vehicle makers unhappy as their own battery manufacturing plans now face a new challenge. Nevertheless, a pro-market policy is often an anti-incumbent one. One bottleneck remains. Batteries are taxed at 18% GST while EVs are taxed at 5% GST. This creates an inverted duty structure (explained in edition#50) that will generate huge GST refund claims — some fraudulent, others genuine. This must be fixed by taxing both batteries and EVs at the same rate.Governments prefer overregulation. But this move is an example of dismantling regulation and enabling markets. For governing technologies under low state capacity, stepping back instead of overdetermining rules is a better approach. Market conditions should inform regulation, not the other way around. The Corporatisation of Ordnance Factory Board If you thought defence PSUs such as HAL and BEL are underperforming, you haven’t met Ordnance Factories (OFs). These 41 factories form ‘the largest and oldest departmentally run industrial organisation in India’ (Indian Defence Industry: An Agenda for Making in India, page 20). Together they employ more than 80,000 people. In 2013-14, OFs had sales of more than eleven thousand crores and yet being a departmentally run organisation, they do not have to follow commercial accounting practices, and do not have to maintain balance sheets and P&L statements. Even their barebones annual reports are classified and hence not open to public scrutiny. How convenient.Not surprisingly, OFs have failed to deliver. The government has now constituted an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) to begin corporatisation — a process that will make these OFs into one or more defence PSUs such HAL. Even though these DPSUs will remain a wholly-owned entity of the Ministry of Defence, corporatisation will make these factories quasi-independent of government and allow them to focus on business goals such as profits and return on investment. With their own budgets and balance sheets, their performance (or the lack of it) will be out in the open. Corporatisation was first proposed by the Kelkar Committee in 2005. Fifteen years down the line, it seems to be gathering some steam. Nevertheless, as our DPSUs demonstrate, corporatisation is but a first step towards a modern defence industrial base. Going further, non-performing OFs should be shut down or the stake in them should be divested. India Policy Watch #2: A Fog Of Information— RSJWe have made the point in an earlier edition about the perils of scanning sectoral data or select high-frequency indicators to arrive at any conclusion about economic recovery in India. The pandemic is still raging with daily case count on an upward trend, supply chains aren’t fully restored, and the consumers aren’t confident of stepping out of their homes and spending. The pandemic and the lockdown were idiosyncratic events and we should accept the uncertainty that comes with it. Yet we seem to be keen on highlighting narrow slivers of data and drawing conclusions from them. Kidding Ourselves?Take this news item that suggests “signs of a pickup that augurs well for manufacturing activity”. Our exports have gone up by 13 per cent and the railway freight loading is up by 10 per cent. That’s great news till you realise the period of comparison is a week! That is, we are comparing data for the week of Sep 1-8 this year to the previous year. It is difficult to draw any conclusion when you compare a random weekly data with the previous year in normal times. It makes no sense to do it in these times. For instance, the railway freight loading could be up because the trucking and logistics companies might still be coming to terms with lockdown disruptions, working capital drying up and absence of drivers who might have gone back to their homes. Till you see a complete picture of the movement of goods across all modes of transport, it is difficult to conclude manufacturing activity is up. A similar case can be made for exports where a single week can’t suggest a trend. But you have the country’s #1 daily newspaper showcasing this as an instance of green shoots of recovery.Or there’s this news item that talks up the auto sector. There’s been a 15-20 per cent growth in auto sales during the 15-day festive period of Ganesh Chaturthi and Onam in the two states of Maharashtra and Kerala. This data is then used to suggest a strong recovery could be on cards in the oncoming festive season. This despite an industry official making it clear these numbers aren’t comparable because of the floods in Kerala during the same time last year that had severely impacted sales. Sobering Reality Then we have this news which indicates we might have lost 21 million salaried jobs in the five months of the pandemic. As Mahesh Vyas, MD & CEO, CMIE, writes:“An estimated 21 million salaried employees have lost their jobs by the end of August. There were 86 million salaried jobs in India during 2019-20. In August 2020, their count was down to 65 million. The deficit of 21 million jobs is the biggest among all types of employment. About 4.8 million salaried jobs were lost in July and then in August, another 3.3 million jobs were gone. These job losses cannot be confined to only of the support staff among salaried employees. The damage is likely to be deeper, among industrial workers and also white-collar workers.” Here we have a research agency that has a long track record of measuring employment data suggesting we might have lost almost a quarter of salaried jobs during the pandemic. Now even this is data for only five months, but you might agree with the long-term view of the author that salaried jobs once lost are more difficult to replace. So, this is a trend that should worry the policymakers. In the same article, Vyas makes another important point about the stagnation of salaried jobs and the rise of ‘entrepreneurs’ who don’t employ anyone:“In 2016-17, employment in entrepreneurship accounted for 13 per cent of total employment. This proportion rose to 15 per cent in 2017-18, then 17 per cent in 2018-19 and 19 per cent in 2019-20. This sustained increase in entrepreneurship in India has not led to a rise in salaried jobs. The count of entrepreneurs has risen from 54 million in 2016-17 to 78 million in 2019-20. During the same period the count of salaried employees has remained stable at 86 million. It is counterintuitive to see a rise in entrepreneurship but not a corresponding increase in salaried jobs.Part of the reason for this is that most of these entrepreneurs are self-employed who do not employ others. Implicitly, they are mostly very small entrepreneurs. The government has propounded the idea that people should be job providers rather than job seekers. This objective seems to be succeeding but not entirely in ways that was intended.Entrepreneurship is often a desperate escape from unemployment rather than an initiative to create jobs.”Act With Confidence, Plan For The WorstWe understand all data is political in the best of times. It is used by partisans and critics of any government to build narratives that suit them. However, the normal expectation is that beyond the political rhetoric the policymakers know which data to use to draft a course of action. We fear this might not be true in these times. First, the data from various sources isn’t indicating a definite trend about the economy. This inability to have any kind of predictive certainty about the extent of contraction, tax collections or the true picture of fiscal deficit makes decision making difficult. This is a difficult time to be a policymaker. This gets compounded by the government being keen to talk up a V-shaped recovery to an extent where there are fears it has started believing its own message about the economy is beginning to touch pre-COVID levels. There’s merit in highlighting feel-good news to build consumer confidence and spur consumption. We get that. We just hope the government is able to make out the difference between its own hype and reality. Often it is not easy to make this out. We have written in our earlier editions that a second ‘real’ stimulus has to be launched before the end of Q2. The extent of contraction in Q1, the impact on the informal economy that’s not fully measured yet, the fall in salaried jobs and the reluctance among consumers to spend make a fiscal stimulus necessary to get the economic engine going again. Also, a significant stimulus announcement in Q2 will be a good indicator of the government not drinking its own kool-aid about a V-shaped recovery. The government and the PM continue to enjoy very high approval ratings. The people are convinced about their intentions. There’s no taint of corruption or policy paralysis on it. These are ideal grounds for the government to take people into confidence about the challenges the economy faces and the sacrifices the people need to make in the short-term as we begin the long road to recovery. This clarity will be welcome. The current fog of information doesn’t help our cause. HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Article] Normany Barry on ‘The Tradition of Spontaneous Order’ where he traces the origin of this philosophical thought.[Article] A Business Standard editorial on why the government should listen to advice that it doesn’t consider politically ‘reliable’. [Paper] Elinor Ostrom’s integrative paper A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems continues to remain relevant. [Book] Indian Defence Industry by Laxman Kumar Behera gives a good overview of India’s defence industrial base.That’s all for this weekend. Read and share. Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com
In this archived episode of Hayek Program Podcast, Distinguished New York University Professor Emeritus Israel M. Kirzner was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Order for his pioneering work on the theory of the entrepreneurial market process. The event was chaired by Mario Rizzo, Associate Professor of Economics at New York University, and featured comments from Peter Boettke, Director of the F. A. Hayek Program and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Peter Klein, W. W. Caruth Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, and Donald Boudreaux, Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program and Professor of Economics at George Mason University. CC Music: Twisterium
Rahim Taghizadegan is an economist, book author and principal of the Scholarium, an independent learning enterprise based in Vienna, Austria. He studied physics, sociology and economy and is an expert on the Austrian School of Economics. His recent book is called “The Zero Interest Trap”. We discuss: Differences in tackling COVID-19 in Singapore and Austria How to be prepared for crisis Loss of trust in politics Privacy aspects of health data usage Social unrest and wealth inequality The Worgl experiment and regional cryptocurrencies Demurrage and velocity of money The correlation of Bitcoin to other financial assets Universal Basic Income Socio-economic consequences of the current crises "According to the view of the Austrian School of Economics, money is a spontaneous order, which is really linked in bottom up cooperation of people. The only thing for sure is that today's kind of rigged game with complex interventions doesn't make sense as a kind of spontaneous order it doesn't make sense that it really be measure for cooperation, voluntary cooperation between people." - Rahim Taghizadegan Full Transcript: https://bitcoinundco.com/en/rahim-taghizadegan/ ---------- Thank you to my sponsors: LocalBitcoins.com - the peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange. Buy and sell bitcoin at https://www.localbitcoins.com ---------- and ---------- BitBox02 Hardware Wallet by SHIFT Crypto https://shiftcrypto.ch Order now and get 10% off! Code: anita ---------- and ---------- Card Wallet - the easy cold storage solution. No software needed. Order now and get 20% off! https://www.cardwallet.com/anita ---------- and ---------- Check out the LTB Network https://letstalkbitcoin.com/ ---------- Follow and Subscribe: Mailing list: https://anita.link/subscribe Twitter: https://twitter.com/anitaposch/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/AnitaPosch ----------
Bio: Akiva Malamet is completing his BA in Government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC) in Israel. He is an incoming MA student in Philosophy and member of the interdisciplinary program in Political and Legal Thought (PLT) at Queen’s University, Kingston, and Frédéric Bastiat Fellow in political economy and public policy with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has written for Liberal Currents, Libertarianism.org, and other publications. He was a winner of the 2018 ‘Carl Menger Undergraduate Essay Contest’ for his paper “Spontaneous Order as Social Construction”, from the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics (SDAE). Essays for show notes: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/fearing-ourselves-dignity-and-disgust-in-a-pandemic/ https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/vice-virtue-nationalism https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/reconciling-libertarian-leftist-views-power-equality https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/postmodernism-libertarian-introduction https://www.liberalcurrents.com/if-not-now-when/ https://sweettalkconversation.com/2018/06/03/the-zen-of-chaos/ https://www.spreaker.com/user/camilomgn/akivamalamet Black anarchists/radicals: https://www.8toabolition.com/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.akpress.org/as-black-as-resistance.html https://www.akpress.org/burn-down-the-american-plantation.html Hello and welcome to Mutual Exchange Radio, a project of the center for a stateless society. This is your producer, Alex McHugh, filling in for host Zachary Woodman. Zach has been dealing with a flooded house, but we wanted to get another episode out this month, so today I’m in the host chair, interviewing Akiva Malamet. Zach and his family are okay, but obviously it’s a stressful situation to deal with. Before we get started, I have just a few programming notes. First, I want to apologize for the slow production schedule these past few months. We’ve of course been dealing with pandemic-related chaos, followed by Zach’s house flooding, and now many of us are involved in organizing in our cities as accomplices to the movement for black lives. We’re trying to get back onto a regular production schedule, but we appreciate your patience in the meantime. Next a quick content note: at the beginning of this interview we talk a bit about the movement for black lives, racialization, and white supremacy. It’s directly relevant to Akiva’s work on nationalism and identity formation, but I want to note that Akiva and I are both white and encourage listeners to seek out the voices and writings of black anarchists and radicals in this time. There are a few essays and manuscripts in the show notes that I would recommend, including the work of William C. Anderson and Mariame Kaba, who are both black radicals worth reading. Finally, an update on podcast merch! We’re planning on releasing new Mutual Exchange Radio merchandise in the fall. Thanks to everyone who responded to our poll on Patreon, it was helpful in deciding what items to stock. All patreon supporters will get one piece of merch for free when we release the line up, and it looks like coffee cups were the most in demand. Before the merch is finalized, we’re also updating the MER logo, so look out for a newer, slicker logo towards the end of the summer, and a whole line of new swag shortly after that. With all that out of the way, let me introduce today’s guest…. Thanks for listening everyone, and special thanks to our associate producers: James Tuttle Dt Jacob Tyspkin And Alex Gutowski These folks support us with a pledge of $10 or more per month on Patreon. If you’re interested in becoming a patron of Mutual Exchange Radio, you can find us at https://www.patreon.com/c4ssdotorg. Supporters gain access to bonus episodes, free C4SS swag, and opportunities to submit questions for our upcoming guests. Thanks again! Questions: If Not Now, When - Why study nationalism, fascism, and white supremacy? - You talk about the ways in which whiteness shifts and how white supremacy seeks to divide and pit minorities against each other. Do you see this happening in the context of the current BLM protests? There's been some discussion about antisemitism and personally I’ve seen people pointing to the participation of groups like the Black Hebrew Israelites as evidence of this. - What’s the difference between actual concern trolling as a means to divide & conquer and the way it’s used by those on the alt right? virtue of nationalism (review) “Finally, he radically oversimplifies Jewish tradition, misrepresenting a complex faith with competing values of both universalism and particularism.” What are the major divides at work here? Benedict Anderson & "imagined communities" -- Are bottom up nationalisms as dangerous as top down nationalisms? On the abstract application of values -- Smash mouth or anime title trolley problem Is there a case for national anarchism? --> nationalism as self determination, self-governance & pluralism Postmodernism -- the formation of identity, values & sense of self Talk to me about heavy metal shows, liminal space, & the pit --zen of chaos What are some poignant examples of expert failure? What’s your take on Szasz? Fearing ourselves (pandemic & disgust) what of animal rights & liberation? Does the case for expanding dignity extend to non-human animals? Is dignity a redeemable/useful social value? Libertarian & left conceptions of power views on privilege & the bread & roses concept of anarchism (do we aim for the necessary minimum of abundance or expansive abundance?) Explain the “means of predation” theory. How worried are you about “soft” coercion in the “economic mode” of interaction? Tell me about Austrian class theory one quibble: “Leftists are correct to highlight that market dominance provides businesses with influence, but overlook how such power can rapidly shift if consumers decide to abandon certain products or services. Big companies, unlike states, are continually subject to competition.” Are they though? Who competes with Amazon? --> though i think youre right about the causes of rent seeking and similar effects How does the “equality of authority” approach prevent class division? (plug Long episode) Quotes / Passages to look at https://www.liberalcurrents.com/fearing-ourselves-dignity-and-disgust-in-a-pandemic/ As a result, our notion of extreme separation, which distances us from our physical selves, often prevents us from recognizing or fully acknowledging the impact of ordinary biological, chemical, and physical processes on our ability to survive and flourish. Invading the body Because we experience such a profound disconnect between our self-image and our reality, we are quick not only to examine the biological nature of illness, but to frame its emergence as part of some larger narrative, to metaphorize it. The urge to metaphorize is a function of the psychological discomfort with being vulnerable. If I am susceptible to something so primitive as disease, it must be because I or someone else is deeply flawed, rather than because such threats are inherent to our world. https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/vice-virtue-nationalism Neglected in his account is that such group membership exists only as strongly as a given individual buys into it. Hazony does not consider that while I might be born in one place, family, and community, I may choose something else later in life. I can also be part of multiple groups and communities which perform different functions and command different loyalties. This ability is imperfect because group statuses (such as race) are often imposed from outside, but we nevertheless possess significant freedom to determine who we are. Hazony rejects moral universalism, as well as any account of human rights. He provides a version of an argument familiar to readers of Edmund Burke and other conservatives and communitarians, as well as the tradition of empiricism associated with David Hume. This says that moral relationships and duties are established through the communities of which we are a part, through the people with whom we interact and hold ongoing relationships. Universal claims are intellectual fictions and morality is only grounded in the norms of specific communities. This means that since each society has its own way of doing things, and that communities differ, we should give space for plurality. By contrast, a universal morality, such as that proposed by Locke, Kant, Mill, Rawls, and other liberal philosophers, is a motivation for imperialism, because universal norms and duties require universal enforcement. https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/reconciling-libertarian-leftist-views-power-equality true liberty requires equality among persons, in a society not fundamentally organized around divisions of power. This is a view held and defended by liberal and libertarian heroes such as Smith, Mises, Hayek, and many others, as well as by major thinkers of the left from Marx and Engels to Foucault and Butler. true liberty requires equality among persons, in a society not fundamentally organized around divisions of power. This is a view held and defended by liberal and libertarian heroes such as Smith, Mises, Hayek, and many others, as well as by major thinkers of the left from Marx and Engels to Foucault and Butler. Liberalism takes a decidedly different approach. For this tradition, what is important is not control over the means of production, but rather over the means of predation. The central instrument for control and dominance over other people is not the market, but the state. More radically, property requires justification not only in terms of the fruits of one’s labour, but in terms of whether it contests or engenders coercion. It is certainly true that property rights are essential to a free society. They allow us to pursue a variety of independent plans and projects, to make free choices without permission from others, to innovate, and create economic surplus. In particular, property allows people to exit from situations and choose a variety of alternatives—what David Schmidtz calls “the right to say no.” It is highly significant that early fights by feminists and other equality movements have been over the right to own property. https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/postmodernism-libertarian-introduction Postmodernism challenges our notions of what the twin tools of reason and empirical observation can accomplish. It also challenges the idea of a universal, clearly demonstrable, and binding morality. In this regard, postmodernism might be an issue for libertarians, who frequently view ourselves as heirs to the Enlightenment, which is often understood as claiming to establish all of these. https://www.liberalcurrents.com/fearing-ourselves-dignity-and-disgust-in-a-pandemic/ Our capacity for self-awareness, combined with our capacity for abstract thinking often gives us a sense of psychological distance from our animal cousins. We see ourselves as mental or even spiritual beings, distinct from the rest of nature. The practical defenses developed by modern medicine have reinforced this sense of separateness, as well as a sense of purity. We can see this when we think about the concept of dignity in human culture. Dignity is often talked about as a synonym for respect, but this is to simplify a more complex feeling and concept. To be dignified means to be set apart. Dignity has a transcendental quality. There is a sense that to be dignified is to be raised above material or instrumental matters in favor of some higher purpose, station, or meaning. It arguably emerges from the notions of holiness present in Abrahamic religious traditions, but altered in the transition to our modern secular context. Notably, the word for “holy” used in the Hebrew Bible is “kadosh” (variants: “kodesh” or “kedushah”) which means “separate” or “different.” Because we experience such a profound disconnect between our self-image and our reality, we are quick not only to examine the biological nature of illness, but to frame its emergence as part of some larger narrative, to metaphorize it. The urge to metaphorize is a function of the psychological discomfort with being vulnerable. If I am susceptible to something so primitive as disease, it must be because I or someone else is deeply flawed, rather than because such threats are inherent to our world. https://www.liberalcurrents.com/if-not-now-when/ We think the relative clarity of this moment yields an opportunity for Jewish, Arab, and Muslim Americans to recognize and exit the mental and social system by which right-wing, white Christian culture controls and dominates political discourse by feigning and manipulating concern for the groups they dominate.
For today's episode, we discuss urban planning with Alain Bertaud, senior research scholar at NYU's Marron Institute and the author of Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities. Our conversation covers many subtopics under the central theme of the processes that allow cities to come into being and be maintained. Cities – healthy ones at least – are in essence the products of spontaneity, compositions of ever-changing movements dictated by the connections between the people who live in them, and we consider how planning can accommodate this reality. One of Alain's central hypotheses is that labor markets are the foundation of cities and the idea that good transport and service-based approaches to planning will produce healthier labor markets. This idea penetrates much of the conversation with Alain today and we hear his thoughts on topics like which cities had labor markets and which didn't, why some cities die and others keep surviving, why some shape history and others don't, the best ancient cities, and how one might approach the construction of a master-planned city. We consider two models that mayors could follow, that of the janitor and that of the CEO, with one focusing on service and the other, a grand vision. We consider which of these two models best serve cities concerning their fundamentally spontaneous nature. Alain also weighs in on the idea of negative property rights, Haussmannian and Schumpeterian approaches to planning, and the future of transportation in relation to a city's ability to develop organically. We wrap our conversation up with a focus on charter cities, looking at how to fill up a space that is not a destination in and of itself yet. Catch our conversation today for wide-ranging and incisive observations on the nature of cities with our wonderful guest. Key Points From This Episode: • A definition of labor markets as places of freedom to select your job or employee. • The idea that labor markets are the foundation of cities. • Examples of cities not based on labor markets where workers had no choice regarding work. • A planning error: placing housing next to jobs, thus threatening the labor market. • US and Chinese cluster cities/fragmented labor markets; integrating them using transport. • The limits of the bus/drive/subway system to cope with urban sprawl. • Getting past oversimplified understandings of cities having one industry like tech or finance. • A conception of a mayor's job as being to enable rather than direct a city's labor market. • How land use is not recycled in non-labor market cities in China and the Soviet Union. • New transport models like Uber and Hyperloop, which have the power to change future cities. • Whether coronavirus' high toll on dense places will stop them from existing in the future. • A consumer's right to make tradeoffs between commute time and floor space area. • The best ancient cities and Alain's belief that different cities are preferable to different people. • Important contributions Haussmann made to Paris' navigability, notwithstanding his motives. • Freedom, exchange, commerce, and why some cities produce a higher cultural output. • An argument for having large municipalities for coordinating efforts more effectively. • Paralysis caused by a dilution of property rights and elevation of negative property rights. • Pros and cons of China's good technicians operating within a command economy. • Why informal economies exist and how some have been absorbed by formal ones. • Reasons why some cities collapse: bad management, changing trade routes, and more. • Alain's book's Support this podcast
It feels like nobody knows what postmodernism is, yet everyone has an opinion about it. Today's conversation with Akiva Malamet is an effort to bring some clarity to an unclear topic. We explore the basic ideas of postmodernism and then move on to their implications for culture, society, politics, and individuals. About my guest: Akiva Malamet is completing his degree in Government at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, where he was a long-time senior member of the RRIS Debate Society. He is a contributor to the sites Liberal Currents and Sweet Talk Conversation. His paper “Spontaneous Order as Social Construction: A Social Analysis of Emergent Institutions” was a co-recipient of the 2018 Carl Menger Award from the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. Some stuff we mention during the conversation: Akiva's essay introducing postmodernism https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/postmodernism-libertarian-introduction Jay Garfield interview about Buddhist philosophy https://wisdomexperience.org/wisdom-podcast/jay-garfield/ Adrian Vermeule's call for Catholic fascism https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/common-good-constitutionalism/609037/ “Gender as Art” by Jason Kuznicki https://www.liberalcurrents.com/gender-as-art/ Jean-Francois Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition” https://amzn.to/3dKc0Rj
In this podcast you will learn1. How to create your own luck 2. How to figure out your next career move 3. Art of connecting the dots Luis Miranda is Chairman of the Centre for Civil Society and CORO. He has been involved in setting up 2 highly successful companies - HDFC Bank and IDFC Private Equity. He is a Co-Founder of the Indian School of Public Policy. Luis spends his time, with his wife, connecting dots; using their networks to help the organisations they are connected with. He is also on the board of Educate Girls and SBI Foundation and co-founded, Take Charge, a mentoring programme for Catholic youth in Mumbai. Luis is also Chairman of ManipalCigna Health Insurance and Senior Advisor at Morgan Stanley. He is a Trustee of the UChicago Trust in India and a member of the Advisory Council of the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at Chicago Booth. Luis blogs for Forbes, Thrive Global and Spontaneous Order and teaches at the Accelerated Development Program of Chicago Booth. Luis received an MBA from the Booth School of Business at The University of Chicago and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
The Alex Merced Cast - Libertarianism, Blockchain and Economics
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective.Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.comSupport the show (http://www.patreon.com/alexmerced)
The Ideas of the Liberty Movement Distilled with Alex Merced
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
The Ideas of the Liberty Movement Distilled with Alex Merced
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/alexmerced/support
The Ideas of the Liberty Movement Distilled with Alex Merced
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Independent Political Commentary From a Geeky Latino Millennial
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Independent Political Commentary From a Geeky Latino Millennial
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Love over Fear: Politics of individual respect, reciprocity and hope
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Love over Fear: Politics of individual respect, reciprocity and hope
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Love over Fear: Politics of individual respect, reciprocity and hope
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Alex Merced discusses the idea of making change through expression or creating alternatives. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Independent Political Commentary From a Geeky Latino Millennial
Alex Merced discusses the trade offs of democratic and market mechanisms for making societal decisions. Learn more at AlexMerced.com and Libertarian101.com
Alex explains the different of explicit/formal orders from decentralized/spontaneous/emergent orders and how it relates to the Libertarian Perspective. Learn more…
Welcome everyone to Finance and Fury, the Furious Friday edition. Today’s episode is part 5 of the miniseries. The last part looked at the ‘fair go’, what is fair for some, isn’t for others. Nearing end of series, I want to put forward a case. The constant need to make things ‘fair’ i.e. have an equal distribution of goods = destroys equality of opportunity for a nation. It destroys what makes nations great (no opportunity from authoritarian governments, we covered this in episode 2), and starts to reduce the freedoms of the nation which is the equality of opportunity. Where does this ‘fairness’ mandate come from? Because it’s a relatively new concept in society. The cause is our progressive nature. Progressivism is the support for the improvement of society by reform A philosophy based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organisation are vital to the improvement of the human condition Progress is what separates us from other animals, which is why we are the ‘king of the jungle’ Our desire for never-ending improvement is great! Allows us to better our positions. We are hardwired to do it. However, there are not many inventions from those being coerced into creating verse those people who are passionate This is where reform comes into it, and I have an issue with it. The reform is a type of social movement that aims to bring a political system (in Democracy) closer to the community's ideal Reforms are mandated changes by the government. Reform in a democracy, politicians will pander to the crowd. This is seen across civilisations, like in Rome with Caesar and the mob rule At the core of progressive philosophy is the improvement of the human condition As the human condition is measured on the individual level, progress is great. But when you measure it in collectives (groups), that’s where you can find issues Measure progress: All individuals doing relatively better, but some groups did better than others This is when progressivisms will make any country socialist if left unchecked/or goes unnoticed. This is the focus of today’s episode. Swapping the focus of individual conditions to group conditions, in the nature of progress, seems to lead a nation to become socialist Progress itself: Humans always change, nature is always progressing. Progress is fantastic, only when it benefits everyone Technology throughout history, with fire, the wheel, and the printing press, the internet, and telephones During the age of enlightenment during the 18th + 19th century lead to an explosion in knowledge sharing and technology, and wealth (free market) First adopters got very wealthy through the new industries like banking, oil, and railroads. These are all relatively new technologies and they built empires for the individuals who managed to corner the market In society, up until about the 1600s most western countries were ruled under a monarchy, which people genuinely accepted. It was understood as the monarchy having the divine right to rule. But then, people were given the freedom to do what they want. The feudal system then shifted to more free markets. The wealth of monarchs never helped anyone, whereas, the wealth of robber barons helped millions of individuals Got wealth through providing cheaper oil, heating, steel, and general goods that people use These resources, now available at the turn of the age of enlightenment, helped many people, but also generated a lot of wealth for the owners What happens when equality is now a mandate of the government? Now progressivism is about equalising economic and social conditions The problem? Some people have more money than others. The solution under this mandate? Something is wrong with the system, and you just need to redistribute the wealth Do you want to help those at the bottom? What is help? Give a man a fish to eat, or teach him how to fish? Which is the better solution? Enter in new economic theories for new inequality and how to equalise the wealth distribution. Not let anyone own anything in the first place. 1900’s progressives originally thought the problems society faced could best be addressed by providing good education, a safe environment, and an efficient workplace. This all sounds brilliant, but slowly changed the focus on solutions In the early 20th Century, theories were put into action with ‘reform’ like communist/socialist movements (economic/eugenic) Socialism upbringing across a lot of nations lead to the starvation, from reform, 110 million dead The reforms themselves come from the legislate for compliance in society. That’s with the governmental power over the population. Increased when some of the population want it (Social organisation – One of four Core Components of Progressivism) This all comes back to activism: with groups campaigning for laws as votes equal change Question: Is it better to let people choose to adopt something for themselves, or is it better to force them into adopting it? Well, I guess it depends on the thing Small groups campaign for laws based around the common views, and it is what most of the population (in areas) wanted Plenty of examples in history, like the Jim Crow laws in the USA as racial segregation laws. These laws are why Rosa Parks was arrested for, which is where the Civil Rights movement came out of Put into place by Democrats, they really wanted racial segregation laws in the South. It got removed by LBJ (D) – ‘ill have those N voting democrat for 200 years’ KKK used as the militant wing of Democratic Party. They are both on the left, the KKK, racist socialists like neo-Nazi’s, and the democratic party all have the collective ideologies. It’s just the KKK are far more vocal about their racist views Wanted to improve genetic breeding through extermination of blacks, which is horrible, they used reform for them to achieve this Question: when ‘intellectuals/experts’ do studies, and prove that they can improve the human race and that the government are the only ones who can help A lot of the population get behind it, the active ones anyway, wouldn’t it be great to have the government make these reforms? Worse example: Eugenics was a big movement pushed by intellectuals and put into place by the government – Strap yourselves in, as this is an extreme example of why the government shouldn’t have power over these reform decisions The project of improving the human population through a statistical understanding of heredity Developed by Francis Galton, closely linked to Darwinism and his theory of natural selection (cousins) Galton was a polymath came up with a multitude of concepts in multiple fields, like meteorology (weather maps), statistics (regression and correlation), psychology, biology (heredity), and criminology (fingerprints). He also came up with the concept of eugenics. Picked up interest with the progressive era in the US around the 1900s through to the 1920s or so. This is where it took a dark turn, as 60,000 (1/3 in California) people were sterilized in the United States based on eugenic laws. 32 U.S. states passed sterilization laws between 1907 and 1937 Surgeries reached their highest numbers in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Designed to remove weak genetics from the gene pool against criteria on individuals Things were more direct with surgeries without consent or a person's knowledge Still happens today, from 2006 to 2010 in California 146 female inmates were sterilized Why don’t we hear of Eugenics much today? Hitler was a big fan, in Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler credits American Eugenics as the inspiration for his final solution. ‘Aryan’ comes from Galton and Eugenics, Nazi’s just used the term Progress on the scale, the Nazi’s prefer to commit genocide. It’s horrible, but it was the German efficiency way Joseph Mengele (Rockefeller Foundation funded), before going to Auschwitz, he was conducting more experiments in conjunction with Californian scientists Word got out late in the war. These US scientists had to change marketing strategies now that Hitler had ruined the party Mobilisation and Destruction has also progressed, as seen in Wars WW1: Nobody had seen war in the ‘modern’ era. With machine guns, artillery, UBoats, basic planes, and tanks at the end Biggest in 100 years in EU since the Napoleonic war, where 5m people died (one other war in this period in China with more casualties), the type of fighting was trench warfare WW1 13-14m died in just over 4 years. There have been wars in past that killed as many, but took decades Everyone said ‘never again’ to world wars, until WW2 broke out WW2: War fought over ‘progressive’ ideas at the time, and left 84m dead in 6 years (horrible thing was mostly civilians) Mongols had the gold medal until this with 50m deaths but took 163 years (1206). Comparing the two, we have 200k vs 14m per year (68 times more). Hence, we have come a long way in 700 years in progressive natures of the wars. The countries with most death as a % were by authoritarian governments Russia (32% of war causalities translates to 13.7% of their population), Germany, (8.7% of war causalities and barely a percent of the population) Manhattan Project gave the ability to decimate an empire with nuke bombs End of the war with Operation Paperclip took in 1,600 Nazi Scientists, they started working on NASA with rocket technology Cold war (war of progress and race for more power) Russia made the Tsar bomb in 1961 which was a 50 megaton bomb (of TNT) Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons (of TNT) – the Tsar bomb is 3,333 bigger and was meant to be 100 megatons The Tsar bomb created a fireball 8km wide, mushroom cloud 65km up (planes 10.5km), and 95km wide at the top Village 55km away destroyed, wooden hundreds of kms, windows 900km shattered, and a shock wave 3 times around the earth’s circumference Imagine setting a bomb off in Brisbane and shattering windows in Sydney Thankfully, it was decided to be mutually assured destruction. This has kept world powers from another WW but has sparked a conflict by trying to keep them away from some countries. Still hasn’t helped stop smaller wars though What happened? Progress had been going well up until the turn of 20th The focus changed Enlightenment had been about progress for the betterment of the individual. Also, for individuals to have equal opportunity Classical Liberalism from the 1600s. The 10 values are: 1) Liberty as the primary political value; 2) Individualism; 3) Scepticism about power; 4) Rule of Law; 5) Civil Society; 6) Spontaneous Order; 7) Free Markets; 8) Toleration; 9) Peace; 10) Limited Government. This is where the government is needed though, for the law, creating peaceful environments and building infrastructure J Locke, wrote a lot on classical liberalism and is one of the major influencers for the American constitution. From 1680 – 1950: an explosion of wealth from these concepts End of True Monarchy (now Constitutional), this increased freedom of choices. Created a prosperous society. Morphed at the end of the 19th century (1860). Modern/Social Liberalism, the role of the government includes addressing economic and social issues such as poverty, health care, and education. Increasing government size and responsibility, no longer a limited government Changed during the 20th century as influenced by socialism: Social democracy as a progressive modification of capitalism Broadly defined as a project that aims to correct what it regards as the intrinsic defects of capitalism Reducing inequalities through government reform Characterised by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups and poverty. The focus is on groups View of who holds the solution changed. Used to be individuals and small communities to now it being governments (Biggest community of all) When you get everything you want and the problem still isn’t solved, what then? Keep pushing for the government to make it fair, rather than the people. When people are the solution, people build their own wealth and the government helps to facilitate an environment that allows us to be wealthy. But, if the government is the solution, all it has to do is take and then redistribute Socialism: The power of governments is embraced and expanded, we lose the free market as it’s now controlled, collectivist rule. This is the polar opposite of civil society because we lose spontaneous order. Which is the matter of individuals being able to organise themselves properly, rather than being forced to by a government. You also lose toleration, because now society is intolerant of those with wealth. You lose all the foundations, except maybe the rule of law. Now you have entered into reducing equality of opportunity for increased equality of outcome As soon as the government is seen as the solution, society is doomed They paint themselves as the solution. Every campaign is on what they can do for you, they need your vote so they need to sell you what they can do for you What do politicians have? They have power, large groups of them have a lot of power. A recent example is the Anti-Encryption Act that was recently passed Power is addictive, politicians tend to behave like addicts. Do and say anything short term to get what they want With ever-increasing demands from the population, ever-increasing power given to the government We went through examples of importance to limit government powers/involvement with ‘progress’ Authority/Power of governments increased again after monarchy at the turn of the century Governments had conscription and Central Banks. The Fed in 1914 provided almost unlimited funding WW1 should have been the 1000th Balkan war. Austria and Hungary annexed land from Serbia, and the Black Hand shooting Franz Ferdinand. But, thanks to treaties between Russia, France, and the UK they created this global extent of death and destruction. WW2 (less avoidable, however, WW1 set it up) Hitler 1933-1939 he ruled fairly peacefully, but he was seen as the solution for German problems. Because Germany wasn’t doing so well in the 1930s, he even one times person of the year in 1938. All of a sudden, he invaded Poland 6 years later, Stalin and Hitler were to split it 50/50. Once again, all large governments (Communists were seen as the solution there) because they promised people everything. But skip forward, they don’t turn out too good, as they end with a lot of death and destruction. The whole point of ep? That government with too much power end up destroying freedoms. We are what makes it happen I hope that I have been able to explain it properly: Solution = Government, going to lead to the population voting for more government Population driven shift on the political spectrum to authoritarian regimes It’s a cycle: more power (to do) they have, then they start to become the solution for more things = authoritarian May be a secondary consequence of the belief in government solutions for problems. Say for instance you have 2 scenarios: Grow up in a world where the government can’t help you, there’s no social support, or housing. It’s a harder world Government provides social support, the government provides solutions to your problems What scenario would you be more likely to make sure you don’t fail? I think that the more someone else says they will solve your problems, the less you will look for your own solution The world is a scary place, but only if you don’t learn how to prosper in it. Like when the solution is the government. Makes a very easily controlled population, when everyone is reliant on the government Why it is important to have balance, like different policies and what the government should be involved in You either want the government to have more, or less interference in your life. And right now there is nothing that the government isn’t involved with. For e.g. Rego (car), bike (gst, helmet), Owning an animal (getting it registered) The current speed on reforms, takes a lot of time to see how reforms will impact society. If too many changes are done at once, it can be the downfall of freedoms for the individual What is another option? If the government can’t give it to you, then you won’t ask for it. Now, imagine how scary the world would be if the government wasn’t there to help? This is what the final episode will look at, and how would a world like that look What the core classical liberalism models are based on If you want to get into contact with us, you can do so on the contact page here.
Hayek used 'spontaneous order' to describe how Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' work. Yale Strategist Gaddis applies this term to international relations.
On this episode of Flashes of Liberty, Kerry discusses the libertarian concept of Spontaneous Order and who first articulated it. Was it the Daoists (as previously thought), or the early Confucians? Episode Resources: You can find more of Kerry's articles and podcasts on her website, here. Visit THE CONFUCIANS AND SPONTANEOUS ORDER to see the resources in creating this episode. Check out Kerry's Facebook Page Follow on: On Facebook On Twitter @MereLiberty Email us at kerry@mereliberty.com If you’d like to ask Kerry a question which may be answered on a future episode, you can text or leave a voicemail at (505) 886-1061. You may also send an email. Consider supporting Kerry's work with just a few dollars a month.
A promotional video about this school sparked a heated debate among listeners in my private Facebook group. The video describes the school as having no classrooms, tests, or homework, in which the students direct and evaluate themselves, etc. Is this a natural model for libertarians, or is it just plain silly? I talk to a staff member and a student at the school in today's episode.
Today, we talk through a collection of stories from the Eclipse adventure that illustrate how sometimes spontaneous order is the best way to organize. Or said another way: How no organization at all can be the best organization if the folks involved have the same shared goal.
Why is it that people in large cities like Paris or New York City people sleep peacefully, unworried about whether there will be enough bread or other necessities available for purchase the next morning? No one is in charge--no bread czar. No flour czar. And yet it seems to work remarkably well. Don Boudreaux of George Mason University and Michael Munger of Duke University join EconTalk host Russ Roberts to discuss emergent order and markets. The conversation includes a reading of Roberts's poem, "It's a Wonderful Loaf."
Show discussing news, politics, and culture from the perspective of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. Hosted by Amy Peikoff. The alliterative show title returns! A number of the week's top news stories, with a few things of personal interest mixed in. See Program Notes (posted at my blog about an hour before showtime) for all the stories, etc., I plan to discuss.
Steven Horwitz is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY and is currently Visiting Scholar at Ball State University, Indiana. Professor Horwitz is also an Affiliated Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center Virgina, a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute in Canada, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. Steve is the author of three books, Monetary Evolution, Free Banking, and Economic Order, Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective, and Hayek's Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions. He has written extensively on Austrian economics, Hayekian political economy, monetary theory and history, and American economic history. Steve has a series of popular YouTube videos for the Learn Liberty series from the Institute for Humane Studies and blogs at "Bleeding Heart Libertarians" and writes regularly for FEE.org. A member of the Mont Pelerin Society, he has a PhD in Economics from George Mason University and an AB in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Michigan. Check out the show notes page for all the links, books and resources mentioned by Professor Horwitz at www.economicrockstar.com/stevehorwitz
Author Chase Rachels joins me to discuss some of the hard cases -- education, roads (of course!), and even security -- when it comes to imagining how society without a state might work.
This week the guys have on a special guest; Chris Spangle. Chris is the Digital Director for the nationally syndicated, top rated morning comedy radio show The Bob & Tom Show as well as the Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of We Are Libertarians (a podcast that “brings all of the irreverence modern politics deserves”). The guys have Chris on to discuss creating and running a successful podcast, how new media and technology is integrating with “dying” mediums like terrestrial radio, of course some political chit-chat and more. To follow Chris, check out his site – We Are Libertarians – at http://wearelibertarians.com/. He has a ton of great shows & content online through his network. Chris’s bio: Chris was raised in Plainfield, Indiana and graduated from Plainfield High School in 2002. He attended IUPUI where he was the College Republicans President during the 2004 elections. While working on Andy Horning’s Congressional campaign in 2004, Horning inspired Spangle to research the libertarian philosophy. Spangle went on to work at Newstalk 1430 AM, WXNT for 5 years as a producer and reporter. During his last year there he was the producer of “Abdul in the Morning,” the premier political talk show in Indianapolis. It was during this time that he witnessed first-hand how broken the two-party system is, although he had been a life-long Republican, he decided to work to grow the Libertarian Party of Indiana and to affect social and political change in a libertarian direction. He began running the day-to-day operations of the LPIN in October of 2008 and left in December of 2012. During his time as the Executive Director he oversaw the complete overhaul of the LPIN website, expanded their marketing to include social media, implemented the Libertarian training center and the LP 101 website and classes as well as recruited and trained hundreds of Libertarian candidates. He is still heavily involved in the LPIN. Spangle went on to work in marketing for the Englehart Group, a political consulting and marketing firm in Indianapolis. One of his main clients is the Advocates for Self-Government, the premier libertarian organization giving libertarians the tools to effectively share the message with the general public. He now works as the web director of a nationally syndicated morning show. He is the publisher and editor of We Are Libertarians, a news site and podcast that covers national and Indiana politics from the libertarian perspective. He is the founder of WAL Radio Network, which brings you podcasts about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He also served as the Chairman of the Board of Free Enterprise Schools, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding school choice. His favorite charity is Rupert’s Kids. Check them out. Spangle’s view of libertarianism is as follows: “Almost every problem in society can be solved by more freedom and liberty, not less. More specifically, we value Individualism, Individual Rights, Spontaneous Order, The Rule of Law, Limited Government, Free Markets, The Virtue of Production, Natural Harmony of Interests, Peace. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/key-concepts-libertarianism.” Spangle resides in Indianapolis, IN with his two cats, Mittens and Cornelius.
City governments tend to provide necessary infrastructure like roads, sewers, and electricity grids. They also enact regulations and other policies designed to affect the quality and density of buildings. But what's the ideal balance between government planning and de-centralized decision making when it comes to affordable housing? What can cities that rely less on planning teach us about the right role for government in improving housing affordability and development overall? Alain Bertaud of NYU joins us on this episode to discuss how solutions to creating more affordable housing can arise spontaneously and independent of top-down design.
This episode of Economics Detective Radio features Pierre Desrochers discussing the life and work of Jane Jacobs. Jacobs, born Jane Butzner, was a thinker and activist who wrote about cities. She spent her early career as a business journalist. When she started writing about urban renewal, she recognized the policy for the disaster it was. Jacobs became a voice for the general dissatisfaction with a policy that would bulldoze whole neighbourhoods, relocating the inhabitants into new buildings preferred by urban planning reformers and political elites. The editors of Fortune Magazine invited Jacobs to write a piece about downtowns. Her piece, “Downtowns are for People” became the magazine’s most-discussed article. She developed the ideas in that article into her first and most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The book launched her as a minor celebrity. In New York City, she successfully opposed initiatives to “renew” Greenwich Village. She also opposed a plan that would have cut a highway through SoHo, Chinatown, and Little Italy. Eventually she found herself opposing the Vietnam War, and, fearing that one of her sons would be drafted, moved to Toronto. Jacobs’ most important contributions to economics came in her second book, The Economy of Cities. Jacobs is essentially a spontaneous order theorist, though she never used that term. Her concept of entrepreneurship is particularly rich and dynamic. Unlike most economists (even Austrians) she has no urge to talk about how entrepreneurship leads us closer to equilibrium. Her largest influence on the mainstream economics literature is the so-called “Jacobs externality.” Jacobs suggested that innovation would often come from outsiders to a given industry, so having many diverse industries clustered in a small geographic area would lead to innovation. The alternative thesis, associated with Alfred Marshall and later Paul Romer, holds that when a region specializes in a particular industry it allows knowledge spillovers to occur between similar firms. There has been significant empirical research to try to resolve these two opposing views, with Jacobs often coming out the winner. Pierre can be found online at his academic website.
Yanis Varoufakis of the University of Athens, the University of Texas, and former economist-in-residence at Valve Software talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the unusual structure of the workplace at Valve. Valve, a software company that creates online video games, has no hierarchy or bosses. Teams of software designers join spontaneously to create and ship video games without any top-down supervision. Varoufakis discusses the economics of this Hayekian workplace and how it actually functions alongside Steam--an open gaming platform created by Valve. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the economic crisis in Europe.
Yanis Varoufakis of the University of Athens, the University of Texas, and former economist-in-residence at Valve Software talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the unusual structure of the workplace at Valve. Valve, a software company that creates online video games, has no hierarchy or bosses. Teams of software designers join spontaneously to create and ship video games without any top-down supervision. Varoufakis discusses the economics of this Hayekian workplace and how it actually functions alongside Steam--an open gaming platform created by Valve. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the economic crisis in Europe.
Yanis Varoufakis of the University of Athens, the University of Texas, and former economist-in-residence at Valve Software talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the unusual structure of the workplace at Valve. Valve, a software company that creates online video games, has no hierarchy or bosses. Teams of software designers join spontaneously to create and ship video games without any top-down supervision. Varoufakis discusses the economics of this Hayekian workplace and how it actually functions alongside Steam--an open gaming platform created by Valve. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the economic crisis in Europe.
Peter Boettke of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book, Living Economics. Boettke argues for embracing the tradition of Smith and Hayek in both teaching and research, arguing that economics took a wrong turn when it began to look more like a branch of applied mathematics. He sees spontaneous order as the central principle for understanding and teaching economics. The conversation also includes a brief homage to James Buchanan who passed away shortly before this interview was recorded.
Peter Boettke of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book, Living Economics. Boettke argues for embracing the tradition of Smith and Hayek in both teaching and research, arguing that economics took a wrong turn when it began to look more like a branch of applied mathematics. He sees spontaneous order as the central principle for understanding and teaching economics. The conversation also includes a brief homage to James Buchanan who passed away shortly before this interview was recorded.
Peter Boettke of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book, Living Economics. Boettke argues for embracing the tradition of Smith and Hayek in both teaching and research, arguing that economics took a wrong turn when it began to look more like a branch of applied mathematics. He sees spontaneous order as the central principle for understanding and teaching economics. The conversation also includes a brief homage to James Buchanan who passed away shortly before this interview was recorded.
In this KosmosOnline podcast, Jeanne Hoffman talks with Joseph Packer about World of Warcraft and spontaneous order. Mr. Packer is a PhD student at the University of Pittsburg School of communication and is the author of the paper “Dethroning the author, when fiction and reality collide in MMORPG‟s.”
Recorded March 13, 2010, at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
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