As you may already know from the recent Mises blog post, I have successfully defended my dissertation as of Tuesday April 22. It should be available on line shortly and I plan to publish several papers in scholarly journals from its chapters as well as a book project to be determined in the near future.

In addition to formally thanking the Mises Institute in the acknowledgments, I just wanted to send you all a special note of thanks. The summers during graduate school that I spent in Auburn were infinitely valuable to my research and learning experience. The opportunity to freely investigate one’s own research interests is a comparative advantage unmatched by any other summer opportunity. Because of the reading, research, writing, and received feedback that I was able to accomplish at the Mises Institute I am proud to say that I am the only GMU student of my entering class to have finished in 4 years and that’s 4 years with a job placement. i owe much of this success to the Mises Institute and will never be able to fully express how thankful I am for all of the support that I have received.

I hope to continue to be involved and participate in Mises Institute events throughout my career. Thank you all again so very very much.

Both the Austrian school of economics and the Virginia school of political economy have been staunch defenders of classical liberalism and free markets. But their commonalities run deeper, including an emphasis on rules and institutions, subjectivism, and the power of ideas.

The Foundation for Economic Education is pleased to announce “From Vienna to Virginia,” a special conference for young scholars on the intersection between these two traditions.A group of graduate students and junior faculty will gather for a weekend to discuss the commonalities and differences between them and, most importantly, to pave the way for future research that incorporates the best of both approaches. Participants will have the opportunity to present original research and get feedback from established scholars in the fields of Austrian economics and Virginian public choice.

FEE invites abstract submissions from graduate students and junior (untenured) faculty members in economics, political science, philosophy, and related disciplines. Abstracts should be 200-300 words and outline a substantive essay beginning with some common thread or divergence between the Austrian and Virginia schools. Coauthored papers are welcome. Entrants must be under 35 years of age, and may submit either one or two abstracts. They must also be willing to attend the “From Vienna to Virginia” conference at the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, September 18-20, 2008. Accommodations will be provided. Travel scholarships may be available.
The deadline for abstract submissions is May 1, 2008. Entrants will be informed by May 15 if their papers are accepted. If your abstract is accepted, a first draft of your paper will be due in electronic form by August 15. Drafts should run no more than 8000 words. The best papers from the conference may be included in a collected volume. We are especially interested in papers touching on the following topics:

* Methodology: the nature of economics, the role of economists, cost and exchange
* Austrian Themes: knowledge problems, entrepreneurship, spontaneous order
* Public Choice: democracy, voting, bureaucracy, dictatorship
* Interventionism: regulation, taxes, redistribution, monetary policy
* Political Economy: rules, institutions, constitutions, social choice, ethics and economics

All sorts of papers are welcome, though excessive formalism is discouraged. Applied, historical, and conceptual papers will receive priority over history of thought papers.

Please send abstract submissions and questions to Adam Martin via amartini@gmu.edu

For more info see the FEE website.

To follow up and expand on the closing ASC session on graduate school, I wrote up this short list. I hope those interested will find it helpful.

Happy Birthday today to Murray N. Rothbard who would have been 81 if my calculations are correct. And happy early birthday to Gustave de Molinari who would be really old tomorrow.

Grab some tootsie rolls, charge the Alamo, read some Keats, but more importantly drink a beer for Carl Menger’s birthday.

Some friends and I have been taking nominations for the most Mengerian meal and the most Mengerian film. Any suggestions?

Current Nominations for films:

A. Cars, the town’s profit drops off because it’s too general a production process and they have to expand their offering through nostalgia and customer service.

B. Ice Pirates, we’re watching it tonight. Me for the first time. But apparently they give a good description of the diamonds water paradox.

Last week I attended the Public Choice Outreach Program and this week The Summer Institute each put on by the Center for the Study of Public Choice at George Mason University. Both events have been most rewarding thus far, and I would highly recomend them for students and scholars interested in the ideas of Public Choice.

Of particular interest to the readers of this blog, were two of the first presentations yesterday. The first was an informal discussion between James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. It is an unmatchable experience to observe these two great minds in action. Most interesting was Tullock’s crediting of Mises as his major influence spurring him onto the idea of merging the disciplines of policitical science and economics. Buchanan admitted to having been ignorant of Mises at the time of drafting the bulk of his major theories, but once introduced to works like Human Action it was clear that Mises was the closest thinker to what he had in mind for Public Choice.

The second presentation of major interest to readers of this blog softly supports this link between Mises and Tullock and Buchanan. It was a breif review of Buchanan’s archived material now available on the GMU library website. Notice this letter in particular where Tullock says to Buchanan, “I have had an idea which might be worth thinking about. Why not try to set up a committe on Praxeology (or some similar phrase) in the Soutern Association.”

Ed Stringham presented his new edited book “Anarchy, State, and Public Choice” at today’s Austrian Scholar’s Conference. He introduced the work as a response to the Public Choice anarchist literature of the 60s and 70s which all seemed to share Buchanan’s pessimistic outlook for the potential for anarchy, the critical pieces of which are reprinted in the publication.

Also included in the work is Buchanan’s response upon reading the initial manuscript. Stringham’s presentation of Buchanan’s response was in itself rather pessimistic. I think instead that Buchanan’s brief comments in the text and at last week’s seminar are a resounding victory for the thesis of Stringham’s volume and in particular Boettke’s conception of Anarchism as a progressive research agenda.

In both his written and spoken remarks concerning the anarchist literature of the 60s and 70s, Buchanan contextualizes his pessimism as a response to the chaotic atmosphere of the academic institutions of the time. In seminar he recollected a department bombing during his brief stay at UCLA. It seemed hard to be optimistic in such conditions. But looking back now Buchanan, alludes to his stance of being pleasantly surprised, or as Fred noted above his backward looking optimism. Since Stringham’s goal as he presented it was to meet this pessimism head on, Buchanan’s response is a claim to victory for the young anarchists, that Buchanan has since updated such pessimism, and in turn takes up the Boettke/Stringham thesis of pushing forward the anarchist theoretical frontier to answer the problems that terrorism seems to inflict upon our modern economy. Though not nor I doubt ever a self-proclaimed anarchist, Buchanan claims the desperate need for a “hard-headed analysis of what terrorism might produce and how it might be fought by persons in a society that respects personal liberties.”

This post was also put up as a comment to Fred Sautet’s discussion of last week’s Buchanan seminar at The Austrian Economists.

The MISEScreants take a road trip to Grove City College to participate in the Austrian Students Scholar’s Conference. Sorry to all our listeners for the long delay between the episodes but this one was worth the wait. Check out the MISEScreants homepage or the podcast feed as soon as possible.

I’d like to apologize for the lack of new episode this past week, but I wanted to let everyone know there was due cause and this is not a representative sign of some terrible cancelation or anything of the sort. The reasons for the pause are as follows:
1. Being mid semster, many of the GMU classes and students are busy preparing for midterms. In addition to this being time consuming for Dan and Adam it has also marked a decline in seminar material to share via the podcast.
2. This past weekend was the Mises Institute Supporter summit, and we did not want to take any attention away from that event, which it just so happened Adam attended which made his participation in weeks episode more difficult.
3. And finally and possibly most influentially Dan is having a slight computer problem and has had to back order an AC adapter from e-machines manufacturer. All the more reason he is planning on switching to MAC. If anyone knows of a good audio editing program, with free download access comprable to Adobe Audition on MAC please let us know.

Thanks for listening and we will have a new episode out as soon as humanly possible.

September has finally arrived and it marks the official launch of The MISEScreants podcast project. The first episode is being podcast today and each week on Fridays we will be sending out fresh new episodes. So if you’re not set up for the Mises podcast feed, you better get on the ball (click here for instructions).

Feel free to send us comments and suggestions on the existing episodes or requests for future episodes, but most of all enjoy. A subforum has been set up on the Austrian Forum for discussion and comments as each episode airs.

Today we broke 250 members and 2000 posts!!! Join the Austrian Economics Forum the premier internet community for discussion, debate, investigation and inquiry of the Austrian School of Economics.

Mises University 2005 is certainly off to a running start. Now the public has access to a companion set of notes for this years event in addition to David Heinrich’s from Mises U 2004. Ms Lisa Casanova has been kind enough to take dilligent notes and is willing to share. She has posted them on the Austrian Forum, where anyone can also feel free to post their own notes, comments, and recollections of the event.

While rummaging through some old materials at the Mises Institute, I came across this original magazine advertisement for Block’s, Defending the Undefendable. It has served as interesting reading during study breaks so I thought I’d share it, so it has been added to the description section of DTU’s catalogue entry.

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, and Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me have been leading the trend of documentary film making as of late. Liberty and free market minded film lovers have few alternative opportunities for viewing. Filling such a void is Bretigne Shaffer’s recent addition to the Mises Media section, Talking Butts. I greatly enjoyed the breif film, recomend it to any agitated smoker out there, and look forward to more films of its type in the future.

Walter Block’s recent thread “I blew my chance to be on the payroll with everyone else!” reminded me of a scene out of the recent Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

The context of the scene is as follows. The wizarding world is in a state of unrest as the evil wizard Lord Voldemort has returned and begun a subversive movement of Death Eaters wreaking havok against the innocent. In the previous book Harry and Voldemort went head to head at the wizarding community’s equivalent of government headquarters (The Ministry of Magic) where a prophecy was revealed which portrayed Harry as “the Chosen One” (the only wizard capable or destined to rid the world of Voldemort). Since such time the Ministry has served almost completely useless at bringing Voldemort or his cohorts to justice. The following excerpt is a conversation between Harry and the Minister of Magic himself (Scrimgeour).Taken from pages 344 – 346, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.”
“Peple believe you are ‘the Chosen One,’ you see,” said Scrimgeour. “They think you quite the hero – which, of course, you are. Harry, chosen or not! How many times have you faced He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named now? Well, anyway,” he pressed on, without waiting for a reply, “the point is, you are a symbol of hope for many, Harry. The idea that there is somebody out there who might be able, who might even be destined, to destroy He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named – well, naturally, it gives people a lift. And I can’t help but feel that, once you realize this, you might consider it, well, almost a duty, to stand alongside the Ministry, and give everyone a boost.”
…
“If you were to be seen popping in and out of the Ministry from time to time, for instance, that would give the right impression. And of course, while you were there, you would have ample opportunity to speak to Gawain Robards, my successor as Head of the Auror office. Dolores Umbridge has told me that you cherish an ambition to become an Auror. Well, that could be arranged very easily….”
…
Harry felt anger bubbling in the pit of his stomach…
“So basically,” he said as though he just wanted to clarify a few points, “you’d like to give the impression that I’m working for the Ministry?”
“It would give everyone a lift to think you were more involved, Harry,” said Scrimgeour, sounding relieved that Harry had cottoned on so quickly. “‘The Chosen One,’ you know…It’s all about giving people hope, the feeling that exciting things are happening….”
“But if I keep running in and out of the Ministry,” said Harry, still endeavoring to keep his voice friendly, “won’t that seem as though I approve of what the Ministry’s up to?”
“Well,” said Scrimgeour, frowning slightly, “well, yes, that’s partly why we’d like-”
“No, I don’t think that’ll work,” said Harry pleasantly. “You see, I don’t like some of the things the Ministry’s doing. Locking up Stan Shunpike, for instance.”
Scrimgeour did not speak for a moment but his expression hardened instantly. “I would not expect you to understand,” he said, and he was not as successful at keeping anger out of his voice as Harry had been. “These are dangerous times, and certain measures need to be taken. You are sixteen years old-”
“Dumbledore’s a lot older than sixteen, and he doesn’t think Stan should be in Azkaban either,” said Harry. “Your making Stan a scapgoat, just like you want to make me a mascot.”
They looked at each other, long and hard. Finally Scrimgeour said, with no pretense at wamth, “I see. You prefer – like your hero, Dumbledore – to disassociate yourself from the Ministry?”
“I don’t want to be used,” said Harry.
“Some would say it’s your duty to be used by the Ministry!”
“Yeah and others might say it’s your duty to check that people really are Death Eaters before you chukc them in prison,” said Harry, his temper rising now. “You’re doing what Barry Crouch did. You never get it right, you people, do you? Either we’ve got Fudge, pretending everything’s lovely while people get murdered right under his nose, or we’ve got you, chucking the wrong people into jail and trying to pretend you’ve fot ‘the Chosen One’ working for you!”

This post is per the request of Mr. Adam Martin…

Imagine Star Wars but Han Solo was the main character instead of Luke Skywalker. Though it’s not a full length film yet, “Firefly” may deserve a strong place on the listing of films of libery. The series has strong libertarian threads running through each episode. Here are some select quotes:

“That’s what governments are for: to get in a man’s way.”

“A government is just a group of people, usually notably ungoverned.”

The crew of the space craft act as salvagers and liberators just trying to get by in an intergalactic totalitarian state. Read Roderick Long’s post on the series at the Austro-Athenian Empire.

The movie following up the series, “Serenity,” is coming out on September 30. The SciFi channel is going to start airing the TV series next Friday evening. A point of note is that the episodes will air in their intended order unlike their original Fox broadcasts.

Today is a momentous occasion for the Austrian Economics Forum. We now have 201 registered members (another milestone of 2000 posts is right around the corner). Participation seems to be subject to spurts of highs and lows but the real value of an ongoing community such as this one is the developing quantity of references and links that builds up over time. If you haven’t taken a look around the forum in a while, you should check back and see some of the new threads.

Multiple forums exist on the net which are dedicated to debate and political hot topics, but forums focused on economics or scholarly issues at all are rare to come by.

Cafe Press is a great website for making promotional merchandise. They don’t require you to order bulks of product. You just send your artwork and logos and they host your stuff. You can put markups on it and earn profits for your organization.

At the recent ASC is sported my new Rothbard hoodie and a number of folks asked where I got it so here’s a couple of interesting sets of merch on Cafe Press:

1: Read Rothbard
2: Liberty Maniacs
3: Hayek

unfortunately I can’t find the one I ordered. Maybe the seller has taken it down??

Taco Bell has been fending off the political tactics of the Immokalee Migrant Worker Coalition for some time now. The CIW has been trying to wage boycotts and launch smear campaigns alleging Taco Bell’s responsibility in regards to low farmworker wages in South Florida. Free market commentary has been done by myself (here and here) and Art Carden on the matter yet our insights have fallen on deaf ears apparently. This Miami Herald breif tells the update.

Gunther von Hagens accepts donations by willing participants to create his bazaar artform. What can we say about self ownership? Check out how to go about donating your body after death at the Body Worlds website.