Re Randy Barnett’s Proposed “Federalism Amendment” , here’s an amended version that I think would be an improvement: Section 1: Secession . Any State or Indian tribe may, by an act of its legislature, secede from the United States. Section 2: Nature of the Union . From the perspective of the United States, the States are sovereign and are the
In a blog post here a few years ago ( Friedman and Socialism ), I mentioned a 1991 Liberty article by Friedman that I remembered where he said he was in favor of liberty and tolerance of differing views and behavior because we cannot know that the behavior we want to outlaw is really bad. In other words, the reason we should not censor dissenting
As reported in Pro-Business Ruling Likely in High Court Campaign Finance Case , it appears likely the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn some federal laws that ban corporate and union expenditures in election campaigns, and some older caselaw that permitted such legislation. Libertarians, and some conservatives, typically have a kneejerk opposition
In my contribution What Libertarianism Is in the Hoppe Festschrift, Property, Freedom and Society , I included a very long footnote (23) critiquing the mutualist “occupancy” view of property rights and, specifically, Kevin Carson’s contention that this is compatible with libertarianism. A edited excerpt from the article on this issue is provided
The celebration of the 4th of July as if it’s a libertarian holiday is a bit much to bear. Secession from Britain was a mistake . It’s easy enough to realize that the Constitution was not some libertarian achievement as conservatives and libertarians delude themselves into thinking. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 led to all the standard
It’s my impression that in the last 5-10 years, there has been a striking movement towards the anti-IP camp among libertarians and Austrians. This is a result of the mounting everyday evidence of injustice resulting from the digital age magnifying the baleful effects of IP that have always existed; and the mounting scholarship, from a pro-property
On the Mises blog, I noticed one of the frequent commentators on IP-related blog threads, one Bala, used to defend the IP position but of late had been taking an anti-IP position. We discussed this privately and I asked him to give me a short write-up about his thought process as he changed his mind on this issue. I find such “conversion” stories
It is clear to anyone who pays attention that IP is under assault–both institutionally , as digital copying, encryption, distributed information, the Internet, and the inherent impotence of IP policing make attempts to monopolize information patterns increasingly futile; and intellectually , as more and more people, especially libertarians–and
Despite a potentially crippling patent injunction against selling Word that Microsoft is battling on appeal , Microsoft, via a senior lawyer, is nevertheless calling for a global patent system “to make it easier and faster for corporations to enforce their intellectual property rights around the world”. Yep–despite the big hit they just took due
Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars , by copyright lawyer William Patry (see his related blog ), was just released. Currently Senior Copyright Counsel at Google, Inc. , Patry had a well-known copyright law blog, which he terminated last year, because he found the current state of copyright law too depressing to blog abou (as I posted about
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.