My latest book, Future
Imperfect, is now out
A video
of my Google talk on it
My Blog
A Virtual
Bardic Circle with some of my storytelling
David D. Friedman's Home Page
This is the home page of David
Friedman. Not the
Hawaiian artist David Friedman, or the composer David Friedman, or
the fix-what's-wrong-with- government David Friedman (050) or the
fifteen year old David Friedman or the eighteen year old David
Friedman or the legendary film pornographer David Friedman or even the
economic journalist David Friedman but the
anarchist-anachronist-economist David Friedman.
Now you know why I included my middle initial.
This page has links to my work in a variety of areas, published and
unpublished. It is still under construction--and always will
be.
My Four Worlds
Quote of
the Month
When persons are presumably robbers and all their property is
presumably obtained by robbery, because they are robbers by occupation,
such as tax collectors and bandits, it is forbidden to benefit from
them since the presumption is that their occupation involves robbery.
(qualified a little later in the
text, however)
...
Why is it that it is generally assumed that the owner abandons hope of
recovery in the case of an Israelite brigand but not in the case of a
heathen? Because the owner knows that heathen courts reclaim property
from a robber on the basis of circumstantial evidence and conjecture,
even though there are no witnesses that he comitted robbery.
(Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikin, The
Book of Torts, Hyman Klein tr.)
-
Living
Paper: An Open
Source Project to produce
computer programs that teach economic ideas.
- My
Books
- Work in Progress: My Recent
Drafts
- My
Courses
- My Recent
Talks
- Products
I Would Like to See
- Story
Ideas
- Me
- Miscellaneous
- My
first novel,
published by Baen, is historical
fiction set in an invented historical
background (or,
if you prefer, fantasy without magic). It has a web page showing the
lovely map created
for me by Chris Porter. A very late draft
of the early chapters is available online, for those who like to try
before they buy as well as podcasts of the entire book, read by me. There
is also a webbed interview
with me about
the book.
- I've written a second novel, this time a fantasy
with magic, although I don't yet have a publisher for it. The first
two chapters are webbed. Comments appreciated.
- I have now
webbed the online version
of my new book, Future Imperfect.
New 10/15/08
My book Law's
Order: What Economics
Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters, published by Princeton
University Press, is accompanied by a book
web page, which
contains images of the entire book along with an
extensive system of links--think of them as virtual footnotes--to
additional material. An earlier
draft is also
webbed, in a somewhat more
readable form, but without the links.
An earlier book was Hidden
Order: The
Economics of Everyday Life, published by
Harper-Collins. Click
to see the Table
of Contents and a sample chapter (on the economics
of crime). Copies are available from Laissez-Faire
books and Amazon.com
as well as many local
bookstores. There is even a webbed transcript
of my appearance on
Book Notes discussing the book. German and Japanese translations of the
book are also in print.
Click here for the online errata--errors
corrected as they come in, starting with Figure 3-1b.
All of one earlier book of mine, Price
Theory: An Intermediate Text, is now
webbed, including the two chapters of the first edition that were
left out of the second edition. So are some sample chapters of my
first book, The
Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical
Capitalism.
I
have recently written a drafts of an articles on The Market
for Students and the future
of stateless societies; a few years ago I
delivered a paper
dealing with market failure and arguments for and against government at
the Mont Pelerin Meeting in Reykjavik.
Why
We are Getting Smarter:
A Conjectural
Explanation
A conjectural
explanation for
concealed ovulation in
humans.
Ideas
for research projects
in economics that
other people might like to do.
I
teach at
Santa Clara
University in
the Law
School and (sometimes) the Business
School. Spring
of 2009 I taught courses
on Analytic
Methods for Lawyers and Economic
Analysis of Law. This spring I am teaching a seminar on Legal
Systems Very Different from Ours and one on Legal
Issues of the 21st Century.
My wife says that when someone
points a camera at
me I look as if was facing a firing squad. I am not sure if this
(from at talk I gave at Texas Christian University entitled "In
Defense of Anarchy") is an improvement.
If you prefer color, this
one was taken on a visit to
Iceland some years back, and this
was taken, and webbed, by Declan
McCullagh.
In
October of 1997,
I had a televised debate on encryption regulation with Ed Meese. The
transcript
is now webbed.
I can be reached at DDFr@DavidDFriedman.com
Detailed
information on usage
of this site.