APPENDIX
MY COMPETITION
The following books, articles, periodicals, and organizations may be of interest to those who wish to pursue the subject matter of this book
a little further. I take no
responsibility for the views of these authors and they take none for
mine. There may be two
libertarians
somewhere who agree with each other on everything, but I am not one of them.
Most are books and articles that I have read, although
in some cases I list a book
I have not read by an author
whose work I know. Several books, mostly on
history, are included on the recommendation of Jeffrey Rogers Hummel,
who helped update the references for the second edition; they are identified by his initials. He is also responsible for many
of the descriptions of libertarian magazines
and organizations.
Fiction
Poul Anderson, 'No Truce with Kings', in Time and Stars (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964). A libertarian novelette that plays fair. The bad guys are good guys
too. But wrong. You are halfway through
the story
before you realize
which side the author is on.
Robert A. Heinlein, The
Moon is a Harsh
Mistress (New
York: Putnam, 1966). Most of his books contain interesting ideas. This one is set in a plausible
anarcho-capitalist
society and was one of the sources
from which my ideas on the subject developed.
A discussion of all
the good things about this book would require a long article; some day I may write
it.
David
Friedman,
Harald
(Baen, 2006). My first novel. The
protagonists
society is loosely based on saga period Iceland, but the book
is an attempt
explore ideas, including the advantages and disadvantages of
alternative political
structures, not a defense of libertarian ideology.
Salamander (published
as a Kindle on Amazon). My
second novel and first real fantasy. It started out as a book
about the fantasy
equivalent of the central planning fallacy, but no plot
survives contact with
the characters.
C. M. Kornbluth, The Syndic
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955). A book about an attractive libertarian society run
by organized crime caught in the stability
problem. It is threatened by external enemies and apparently doomed to
eventual collapse;
any energetic attempt to defend it will make it no
longer worth defending.
Larry Niven and Jerry
Pournelle, Oath of Fealty. (New
York: Pocket Books, 1981). Both the authors
of this book have some libertarian sympathies, neither is an orthodox libertarian. It is set in the near future and centers around a privately
owned arcology,
a building the size of a small city
providing its own substitutes
for
governmental services. A central
point of the book,
one which should be of interest
to anarcho-capitalists,
is that people protected
by a private
organization instead of a government will feel
for that private organization the same sort of loyalty and patriotism that people now feel
for their nation.
The arcology
is us, the government
of the city
of Los Angeles is them.
Niven and Pournelle have jointly written several other good books
that have nothing much to do with libertarianism; I particularly recommend
The Mote in God's Eye
and Inferno. 'Cloak of Anarchy',
in Niven's collection
Tales of Known
Space (New
York: Ballantine, 1975), is an anti-anarchist
story that anarchists should read and think about.
H.
Beam
Piper and John Joseph McGuire, Lone
Star Planet (aka A
Planet for Texans).
A lot of fun. Set on a planet one of whose central
institutions is obviously
inspired by a Mencken essay.
Ayn Rand,
Atlas Shrugged
(New York: Random House, 1957). The
Fountainhead (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943). Anthem, rev. ed., (Los Angeles: Pamphleteers, 1946). Rand's novels upset some people because
the heroes are all
handsome and the villains nauseating, with names to match. She did it on purpose; she did not believe art should be realistic and wrote The
Romantic Manifesto
(New York: World Publishing, 1969) to prove it. When someone told her
that her work was not in the mainstream of American literature, she is supposed
to have replied that
"the mainstream of American literature is a stagnant
swamp."
Eric Frank Russell, The
Great Explosion (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1962). Bureaucrats from Earth are Putting The Universe Back Together. One of their failures
involves an intriguing
anarcho-pacifist
society. This story may
have originated MYOB (for 'Mind Your Own Business').
J. Neil Schulman,
Alongside Night (New
York: Avon, 1987), The
Rainbow
Cadenza (New
York: Simon and Schuster,
1983). Two explicitly
libertarian novels. The first describes
a libertarian revolt in the near future, the second a society with a male-to-female ratio of ten to one where women are drafted into a prostitution corps. The first has now been made into a
movie, in which I got
to play a bit part.
L. Neil Smith, The
Probability Broach (New
York: Ballantine, 1980), The Venus
Belt (New York: Ballantine, 1980) and
lots more that I have not yet read. His books are sometimes
fun; my main reservation is that the
good guys are too obviously in the right and win too easily.
Vernor Vinge, True Names (New
York: Bluejay, 1984), The Peace War (New
York: Bluejay, 1984; Ultramarine,
1984), Marooned in Realtime (New
York: Bluejay, 1986; Baen, 1987). These are science fiction novels by
a libertarian with interesting ideas. The historical
background for the last of the three, which is set in the very far future, includes an anarcho-capitalist society along the general lines described in Part III of this book.
The story The
Ungoverned', included
in the book
True Names and Other
Dangers (New York: Baen, 1987), is set after
The
Peace War and before Marooned in Realtime. It portrays an anarcho-capitalist
society under attack by
an adjacent state. One of the best things about the story
is the way in which both anarchists and statists take their own institutions entirely for granted.
The failure of the attack is in part a result of its leaders misinterpreting what they run into because they insist on
viewing the anarcho-capitalist
society as something
between a rival state and a collection of gangsters.
Economics
Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen, University
Economics: Elements of Inquiry, 3rd ed., (Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1972). A good
unconventional economics text, entertainingly written.
Robert Frank, Passions
Within
Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions. An
interesting discussion of
how emotions fit into the economists model of rational
behavior by an original
economist with whom I quite often disagree. (Norton 1988)
David D. Friedman, Price Theory:
An Intermediate Text. (Cincinnati: South-Western, 1986), webbed
.
Hidden
Order, the Economics of Everyday
life, is Price
Theory converted from a text book
to a book aimed at the intelligent layman interested in
learning economics.
Laws
Order: What Economics Has to Do
With Law and Why it Matters
(Princeton University Press, 2000, page images with links webbed
, late
draft webbed
in HTML.
Milton Friedman,
Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). This is a modern libertarian classic and well worth reading.
Milton and Rose
Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal
Statement (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980). The Tyranny
of the Status
Quo (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983). The first of these is the case for a free society from a slightly
more moderate position
than mine.
The second is largely an explanation of why it is so hard to change
the existing situation, even when a candidate like Reagan or Thatcher is apparently elected for the purpose of doing
so.
Henry
Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (New
York: Harper, 1946). This is reputed
to be
a good short
introduction to
economics; I have not read it.
Time Will Run Back: A Novel about the Rediscovery of Capitalism, rev. ed., (New
Rochelle, NY: Arlington
House, 1966). The rediscovery of capitalism in a future communist world. It pretends
to be a novel.
Ignore that
and
you will find it an absorbing
explanation of why socialism cannot work as well as capitalism
and what happens when it tries.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and
Giroux 2011). The
central assumption of economics is rationality, that
individuals tend to take
the actions that best achieve their objectives. Part of the
defense of that
assumption in my Price
Theory was to
argue that while it was not a perfect description of human
behavior, it was the
best description possible, since with no theory of
irrationality we had no way
to predict deviations from rational action.
Kahneman has a theory of irrationality. His book can be seen
either as a critique
of the rationality assumption or as an expanded version of it,
one that
includes in the constraints the individual decision maker must
deal with the
limited processing power of the human brain. He is a
psychologist who received
a Nobel prize in economics and, in my view, deserved it.
Alfred Marshall,
Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London:
Macmillan, 1946). This is the book that, more than any
other, created modern economics;
it was first published in the 1890s and is still well worth reading. The approach to
understanding economic efficiency that I use is borrowed,
with minor modifications, from Book III,
Chapter 6.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action:
A Treatise on Economics, 3rd ed., (Chicago:
Regnery, 1963). Much is made in
libertarian circles of the division
between Austrian'
and 'Chicago'
schools of economic theory, largely by people
who understand neither. I am classified as 'Chicago'. This is the magnum
opus of one of the leading Austrians. His 1927 Liberalism is
described
to me as is
short, accessible, and possibly more directly related to the
topic of this
book. I have not read it.
S. Peltzman, An Evaluation of Consumer Protection Legislation: 1962 Drug Amendments. Journal of Political
Economy September/October 1973. This is a classic
example of the use of economics and statistics to measure the effect
of government regulation. Peltzman's conclusion
was that the
legislation he was looking at reduced
the rate of introduction
of new drugs by about
half while having no
detectable effect on their
average quality.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and
Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776;
reprint ed., New York: Modern Library, 1937). Usually referred to simply as The Wealth
of Nations, this
is arguably
the most influential libertarian book ever written. Webbed.
Law and Economics
Gary
S. Becker and George J. Stigler, Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of Enforcers, Journal of Legal
Studies, 3
(January 1974), 1-18. This article,
by two eminent economists, introduced the
idea of having criminal offenses privately
prosecuted into the law and economics
literature. Webbed.
Jesse Byock, Feud in the Icelandic
Saga (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Byock is a historian. While his perspective on the Icelandic system is quite different from mine,
his conclusions are similar.
R. H. Coase, 'The Problem of Social Cost', Journal of Law and Economics, 3 (October 1960). This is the article
that originated the Coase Theorem and revolutionized the economic analysis
of legal rules, in particular
rules dealing with externalities. Webbed.
Richard Epstein, Takings: Private
Property and
the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985). Richard Epstein
is both a prominent
legal scholar and a libertarian. This book
argues that the
takings clause
of the Constitution ("nor shall private property be taken for public
use, without just compensation"), properly interpreted,
imposes stringent
constraints on what the government is permitted to do.
A city government that zones my block as single-family residences only is taking from me one of the bundle of rights that
make up my ownership of
my housethe right to rent out part of it. Under
Epstein's interpretation of the Constitution, it can do so only if it is willing to compensate me for the loss ("just compensation") and only if the benefits
of the law are distributed very widely
("for public
use"). Since most such government interventions are intended to benefit one group at the
expense of another and
politically profitable only for that reason, most of what government now does is, by
Epstein's interpretation, unconstitutional. A government bound by his constraints
would do
very much less than
our
government presently does.
Part of what makes this book interesting is the intelligence of the author and the sophistication of the argument.
He is not merely asserting a constitutional interpretation; he is interweaving lines of argument based on constitutional theory, public choice economics, and political philosophy, in order to support
and explain his conclusion.
A critique
of Epstein
for not going far enough is Jeffrey Rogers Hummel,
'Epstein's Takings Doctrine
and the Public- Good Problem', Texas Law Review, 65 (May 1987), 1233-1242.
I
once heard a Democratic senator, questioning a Supreme Court
nominee, ask if he
agreed with Epsteins view, with the clear implication that if
he did he ought
not to be confirmed.
David D. Friedman, 'Efficient
Institutions for the Private Enforcement of Law', Journal of Legal Studies, June 1984. This
is an article of
mine rebutting an earlier article by Landes and Posner, itself a
response to the 1974 article by Becker
and Stigler.
Landes and Posner claimed to show that a system in which all law
was private, so that
crimes created a claim against the criminal by the victim rather than by the state, could not be efficient. I claim to show that it
can be. Webbed.
What I described was an anarcho-capitalist enforcement system combined with the present system of courts and laws. Think of it as creeping anarchism.
Two more steps and
we are there.
'Private Creation
and Enforcement of LawA
Historical Case', Journal of Legal Studies, 8 (March 1979), 399-415. A longer and more academic
version of Chapter 44.
Webbed.
'Reflections on Optimal
Punishment or Should the Rich Pay
Higher
Fines?' Research in Law and
Economics, 1981..
'What is Fair Compensation for Death or Injury?' International
Review of Law and Economics, 2,1982. Webbed.
Richard A. Posner, Economic
Analysis of Law 3rd edn. (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1986). This is a
treatise masquerading as
a textbook; the first edition helped create the modern
economic analysis of
law.
My discussion
of the economic analysis of law in Chapter 43 is misleading in at least two
ways. It ignores many of the
complications one would face in constructing a real
law code. It also focuses on the question of what legal rules are
economically efficient while ignoring two other
questions of importance: what economics tells us about the
consequences of the laws we actually
have and what economics tells us about what kind of laws we can expect to have. Posner approaches the subject from a different angle. He argues that
there are reasons
to expect the common law, the system of legal rules generated
not by the legislature but by
the accumulation of court decisions,
to be
economically efficient
and claims to show that much
of the common law
in fact is efficient. His Economic Analysis of Law and my Laws
Order go into the question
of efficient legal rules in much more depth than the discussion in this book.
William Miller, 'Avoiding Legal Judgement: The Submission
of Disputes
to Arbitration in Medieval Iceland', The American Journal of Legal History, 28
(1984). 'Gift, Sale, Payment, Raid: Case Studies in the Negotiation and Classification of Exchange in Medieval Iceland', Speculum, 61
(1986). Miller is
a law professor
who has written
extensively on
Medieval Iceland. He writes as a legal scholar not an economist, and his conclusions are not always the
same as mine.
Public Policy
Martin Anderson,
The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical
Analysis of Urban Renewal, 1949-1962
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1964). The book
that showed what urban renewal does to, not for, the poor.
Leslie Chapman,
Your Disobedient Servant (London: Chatto and Windus, 1978). A fascinating first-hand account of the mechanics of Friedman's first lawwhy things cost twice as much when governments do them. The author was a
British bureaucrat who tried to reduce the costs
of his part of the bureaucracy by modest
measures such as not heating buildings that nobody occupied. He succeeded
technically, reducing
costs by
about 35% with no
reduction in output,
but failed politically;
he is no
longer a bureaucrat.
Ronald Hamowy, ed., Dealing with Drugs: Consequences of Government Control (Lexington: Heath, 1987). (JRH)
Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980.
(New York: Basic Books, 1984). This is a persuasive and controversial book. It
argues that
the
liberal reforms of the Kennedy and Johnson era, especially in welfare and education,
had the opposite of their intended
effect. While there has
been some serious criticism
of the author's
statistics, the book
remains interesting both as a history of what happened
and an explanation of why.
Robert Poole, ed., Instead of Regulation: Alternatives to Federal Regulatory Agencies
(Lexington, MA: Heath, 1982). Poole is the editor of Reason magazine and one of the few libertarians I usually find myself agreeing with.
Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981). One of the most powerful
ideas of
recent decades has been the myth of overpopulation, according to which we are on
the edge of running out of
everything with catastrophic
results. Julian Simon wrote the best refutation I know of. While I think he occasionally
overstates his casehis "ultimate resource" is people,
and he seems to believe that
the overpopulation
scenario is not only false at the moment but virtually
impossiblehe does a very good job of answering
the popular
arguments on the other side. In particular, he shows overwhelming evidence that
things are getting better, not worse nutrition, for instance, in the underdeveloped as well as the developed
world has been steadily improvingand explains why the simple arguments for imminent catastrophe are wrong.
Thomas Sowell, Civil Rights: Rhetoric
or Reality? (New
York: Morrow, 1984). (JRH)
Richard L. Stroup and John Baden, Natural Resources: Bureaucratic Myths and
Environmental Management (San Francisco: Pacific Institute
for Public Policy Research, 1983). Baden and Stroup, ed., Bureaucracy
v. Environment:
The
Environmental Cost of Bureaucratic Governance
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981). (JRH)
Thomas S. Szasz, Ceremonial
Chemistry: The
Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers, rev.
ed., (Holmes
Beach, FL: Learning
Publications, 1985). (JRH)
Walter E. Williams, The
State Against Blacks (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1982). (JRH)
History
T. Anderson
and E J. Hill, 'An American Experiment
in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not
So Wild, Wild
West', The
Journal of Libertarian Studies, Volume
III, Number 1,1979.
Anderson and Hill discuss the history of the American
west as an example of something close to anarcho-capitalism; the theory of anarcho-capitalism
they test is drawn
from Part III of this book. They describe a variety of private institutions by which
individual rights were effectively
enforced in a society with little or no government. Their conclusion is that
the system worked more
or less as I predict and was much less violent than western books and movies suggest.
According to their account, only two
of the cattle towns ever had as many as five killings in a year. The
average (for
five towns over 15 years)
was 1.5
homicides per year.
Webbed.
T. S. Ashton, The
Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830
(London: Oxford University
Press, 1948).
E A. Hayek, ed., Capitalism
and the Historians (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1954). Both of these books describe what really happened during the Industrial Revolution
and how it got (mis)reported by historians.
Ross D. Eckert and George W. Hilton, 'The Jitneys', Journal of Law and Economics XV (October 1972), pp.
293-325. This article is
the historical background
for Chapter
16. It describes the brief flourishing of jitneys in America and how
the trolley companies,
unable to win
on the economic market, succeeded in legislating the jitneys out of existence.
Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., The
Decline of American
Liberalism, rev. ed., (New York: Atheneum, 1980). The author uses
"liberalism" not in its modern sense of democratic socialism
in dilute solution but in its old sense of support
for freedomroughly speaking, libertarianism.
His book
is an overview
of the rise and fall of classical liberal views in the U.S. (JRH).
Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz,
The Great Contraction, 1929-1933 (Princeton: Princeton
University
Press, 1965). How government mismanagement, not some inherent
instability in the free enterprise system, caused the Great
Depression. This is part of a longer and much more technical work called A Monetary
History of the United States, 1867-1957
(Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1963).
Robert Higgs, Crisis
and Leviathan: Critical
Episodes in the Growth of American Government
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). The author argues that the growth of the U.S. government resulted
from opportunistic exploitation of crises such as wars and depressions. (JRH)
Jonathan R. T. Hughes, The Government Habit: Economic
Controls from Colonial
Times to the Present
(New York:
Basic Books, 1977). (JRH)
Jeffrey
Rogers
Hummel, Emancipating Slaves,
Enslaving Free Men:
A History of the American Civil War (Open Court, 1996).
A history of the
Civil War by a libertarian historian and economist with a low
opinion of both
the Union and Confederate governments.
Gabriel
Kolko, Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916
(Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1965). The Triumph
of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: Glencoe Press, 1963). Kolko
is a
socialist historian
who argues, with extensive
evidence, that
at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth,
capitalism was working for everybody except the capitalists, who thought they could make more money by getting
the government to intervene in their favor.
James J. Martin, Men Against the State: The
Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908
(De Kalb, IL: Adrian Allen, 1953). (JRH)
John S. McGee, 'Predatory
Price Cutting: The Standard Oil (N.J.) Case', Journal of Law and Economics, 1 (October 1958), 137-69. The classic article showing that the standard textbook account of how Rockefeller established his
monopoly is mostly myth.
Webbed.
Sheilagh C. Ogilvie,
'Coming of Age in a Corporate
Society: Capitalism, Pietism and Family Authority in Rural
Wurttemberg, 1590-1740', Continuity
and Change 1
(3), 1986, 279-331.
This is a fascinating article by a libertarian historian, describing how and why liberty was restricted in a pre-industrial
society. One particularly interesting
point is the causal
relation between a welfare
state and restrictions on
individual liberty. In modern America, an important argument for limiting immigration is the fear that
immigrants will go on welfare, a problem that
did not exist at the
time when we had unrestricted immigration. In seventeenth-century Wurttemberg, where welfare was provided at the village level, one result was restriction on inter-village migration. Another was that citizens could be punished
for letting their
children go fishing
when they should have been spending
their time learning a trade.
James
C.
Scott, Seeing like a
State: How
Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
(Yale 1999). An
interesting and original account of how states have found it
necessary to alter
the societies they rule in order to rule them, and the often
unfortunate
consequences. The author goes to some trouble to make it clear
that he is not
(horrors) a libertarian.
Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History
(New York: Basic Books, 1981).
Lawrence H. White, Free Banking in Britain:
Theory, Experience,
and Debate, 1800-1845,
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1984). The author describes
the working of a system in which money was produced by private firms on a
competitive market.
William C. Wooldridge, Uncle Sam the Monopoly
Man (New Rochelle,
NY: Arlington House, 1970). The history of private
production of such traditionally
governmental services as delivering mail, building roads, and resolving
disputes.
Libertarian Ideology
Walter Block, Defending
the Undefendable: The Pimp,
Prostitute, Scab, Slumlord,
Libeler, Moneylender, and Other Scapegoats in the Rogue's
Gallery of American Society (New
York: Fleet
Press, 1976). This is a peculiar
book. The author argues that a wide range of what are usually considered undesirable activities
are not only permissible but admirable. In some cases he may be right. The book has too much feel
of 'I
know the conclusion I want to reach, now let's
find some arguments
for it' to entirely suit my taste. Webbed.
Karl Hess, 'The Death of Polities',
Playboy 16 (March 1969), 102-04,178-185. Reprinted in Henry
J. Silverman,
ed., American Radical Thought: The Libertarian Tradition
(Lexington: Heath, 1970), pp. 274-290.
Webbed.
Michael
Huemer, The Problem of
Political Authority: An Examination of the
Right to Coerce and
the Duty to Obey (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). An analysis
and rebuttal of
arguments for the claim that government coercion is morally
legitimate, written
by a libertarian philosopher.
J.
C.
Lester, Escape from Leviathan: Liberty, Welfare and Anarchy
Reconciled (St. Martins Press
2000). An intelligent
attempt to solve some of the problems in libertarian moral
philosophy that I
raise in Chapter 41.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New
York: Basic Books, 1974).
David Osterfeld, Freedom, Society, and
the State: An Investigation into the Possibility of Society Without Government
(Lanham, MD: University
Press of America, 1983). (JRH)
Ayn Rand
and others, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: New American Library,
1966). The Virtue of Selfishness (New York: New American Library,
1964). Collections of essays and passages
from Rand's books. She
had a complete
philosophy to sell, of which libertarianism was a part. Many libertarians buy the whole package; that is how some of them became libertarians. I don't and didn't, but find much of value in her writing. Her hard-core disciples are hostile to the libertarian movement,
presumably on
the theory that
heretics are worse than pagans.
Murray
N. Rothbard, For
a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto,
2nd ed., (New York: Macmillan, 1978). Webbed.
'Law, Property
Rights, and Air Pollution', Cato Journal,
Vol. 2, No. 1
(Spring 1982). This is an attempt by a prominent
natural rights libertarian to deal with the sorts of
problems raised in Chapter 41. I find his answers unsatisfactory, but you
may wish to read the article and decide for
yourself. Webbed.
John T. Sanders, The
Ethical Argument Against
Government (Washington: University Press of America, 1980). By a
political philosopher, for political philosophers, and probably not very accessible
to anyone else, myself included.
Morris and Linda Tannehill, The
Market for Liberty
(Lansing, MI:
Morris
and Linda Tannehill, 1970). Webbed.
Jerome Tuccille, Radical Libertarianism: A Right Wing Alternative (New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970).
Jarret B. Wollstein, Society Without Coercion:
A New Concept of Social Organization (Silver Spring, MD: Society
for Rational Individualism, 1969). Webbed.
The Tannehill and Wollstein books were later issued together under the title Society Without Government (New York: Arno, 1972).
These books vary widely in orientation and intellectual level. Many cover the same sorts of issues as I do, especially in my third part. If I had found them
entirely satisfactory, I might not have written this book.
The Libertarian Movement
Brian
Doherty,
Radicals for Capitalism:
A
Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian
Movement (Public
Affairs, 2007). The best such history I know of.
Norman P. Barry, On Classical
Liberalism and
Libertarianism (New
York: St. Martin's
Press, 1987).
Henri Lepage, Tomorrow, Capitalism: The Economics of Economic Freedom (La Salle: Open Court, 1982).
Jerome Tuccille, It Usually
Begins with Ayn Rand (New York: Stein & Day, 1971).
The books by
Lepage and Barry are sympathetic surveys of libertarianism. Lepage
writes as a journalist interested
in ideas, Barry as a political
philosopher. Tuccille's book
is in part a personal
reminiscence and in part an inside account of
the development of the modern libertarian movement. Barry is an intelligent and fair-minded
scholar and Tuccille an entertaining reporter
and storyteller. My main
reservation about both is that the
parts of their books dealing with the ideas and events I know most about are the parts I find least convincing.
Stephen L. Newman, Liberalism at Wits' End: The
Libertarian Revolt Against the Modern State
(Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1984). Newman demonstrates how difficult it is to understand and explain a set of ideas when you
are absolutely certain that
they are wrong. He makes a number of legitimate
criticisms of libertarians and libertarianism.
But when he finds
what seems to him to be a fatal flaw in libertarian ideas he takes it as confirmation of what he already knew instead of trying to see if there
is some way in which libertarians might deal with it.
Geoffrey Sampson,
An End to Allegiance: Individual Freedom and the New Politics (London: Temple Smith, 1984). Sampson is a British libertarian (he prefers the term liberal).
His book is a thoughtful
explanation and critique
of libertarian ideas, illuminated by a good
many of his own insights.
Michael
S.
Berliner, ed., Letters of Ayn
Rand (Dutton 1995).
A first hand picture of an impressive and very odd person.
Barbara Branden, The
Passion of Ayn Rand (New
York: Doubleday, 1986). A sympathetic biography of Rand by someone who was close to her, interesting more as a portrayal of an extraordinary personality
than as an
explanation of her ideas.
Miscellaneous
Robert Axelrod,
The Evolution of Cooperation (New
York: Basic Books, 1984). A fascinating discussion, based on
game theory and computer
simulations, of how and why humans cooperate
with each other.
Frederic Bastiat, The
Law (1850; reprint ed., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education,
1950). One of the classic presentations of the libertarian position, written when we were still called liberals. Bastiat is the
author of, among other things, a petition
from the candle-makers of France requesting protection against the unfair competition of the sun.
Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1976). An explanation of evolutionary
biology and sociobiologythe economics of genes. One of the most interesting books I have read in recent years.
David
Friedman,
Future Imperfect: Technology and
Freedom in an Uncertain
World (Cambridge University Press, 2008). My discussion
of technological
revolutions that might happen over the next few decades and
their possible
consequences. Webbed
draft.
Paul Goodman,
People or Personnel: Decentralizing and the
Mixed System (New
York: Random House, 1965). Hard to classify. Paul Goodman was not the leftist some leftists think he was; he was a libertarian and an anarchist. His books are variable,
with a lot of good ideas.
Friedrich A. Hayek, The
Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944). Hayek argues that a centrally
planned economy must lead to totalitarianism.
Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, eds., The Collected Essays,
Journalism and
Letters of George Orwell. (New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1968). Orwell is my favorite political
essayist, a socialist
with libertarian sympathies who
recognized many of the problems with socialism but saw no better
alternative. His willingness to discuss honestly the
problems in his own position
should be a model
for all ideological writers.
Alvin Rabushka, Hong Kong: A
Study in Economic Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). (JRH)
Thomas
Sowell,
The Vision of the
Anointed:
Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (BasicBooks
1995). A depressingly convincing explanation of modern
liberalism by an able
and original thinker.
Lysander Spooner,
No Treason:
No. VI, The
Constitution of No Authority (1870; reprint ed., Larkspur,
CO: Pine Tree Press, 1966). Cited in Chapters 6
and 28. Webbed.
Edward
P.
Stringham, ed., Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice
(Transaction
Publishers 2007).
Thomas S. Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a
Theory of Personal Conduct,
rev. ed., (New York:
Harper and Row, 1974). The
Manufacture of Madness:
A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (New
York: Harper and Row, 1970). Szasz was an interesting writera libertarian psychiatrist who profoundly distrusted the psychiatric profession
and regarded mental illness as a misleading and dangerous metaphor. Here and elsewhere
he argues against locking up innocent people just because
you think they are crazy.
Anything written by
H. L. Mencken.
Rothbard called him the joyous libertarian. He was also one of the great essayists of the century.
Mencken's style is to Bill Buckley's
what Buckley's is to mine.
Some More of My Articles
that You May (or May Not) Find of Interest
A Libertarian Perspective
on Welfare, with Geoffrey Brennan, in Income Support: Conceptual
and Policy Issues, Peter G. Brown, Conrad Johnson,
and Paul Vernier, eds. (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981).
'The Economics
of War', in Blood and
Iron: There Will Be
War, Jerry Pournelle, ed., (Tom Doherty Assoc
1984). Webbed.
'Should Medical Care be a Commodity?' Rights to Health Care,
George J. Agich
and Charles E. Begley, eds., Reidel
1989. Webbed.
'Comments on Rationing Medical Care: Processes
for Defining Adequacy',
and 'Comments on "Rationing and Publicity"' in The
Price of Health,
Reidel 1986.
'A Theory of the Size and Shape of Nations', Journal of Political Economy,
85 (February 1977), 59-77.
My first economics
article, and still one of my favorites. I claim to use economic theory to explain the map of Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the present.
Governments are analyzed
as firms competing
for control over
taxpayers. Webbed.
'Gold, Paper, or . . .: Is There a Better Money?' Cato Institute Policy Analysis,
1982. This is a longer version of
chapter 46. Webbed.
'Many, Few, OneSocial Harmony and the Shrunken Choice Set', American Economic Review, 70 (March 1980), 225-232.
Laissez-Faire in Population: The Least
Bad Solution.
An Occasional Paper of the Population Council,
43 pp. (1972). Webbed.
Stuff Online
Webbed
video
and audio recordings of my talks
and interviews.
Of
my
classes:
A
blog
where some
people I think well of post.
A
site
critical of
libertarianism by someone more reasonable than critics
usually are, if less
reasonable than I might wish.
The
site of Larry Lessig,
who has not yet realized that he is a libertarian.
The
site of Bryan Caplan,
a libertarian and, more important, a good economist and
original thinker. The
only professor I know who runs regular role playing games with
his graduate
students and has his old D&D map up in his office. As some of my friends
might put it, hes
a hoot.
An
interesting
essay
by
Nozick attempting to
explain the
anti-capitalist bias of modern intellectuals.
Eric Raymond is best
known as a leading
figure in the Open Source movement. He is also an articulate
and interesting
libertarian. Slightly crazy, like all the best people.
Magazines
Cato Journal,
A scholarly libertarian
journal more oriented toward public policy.
Critical Review, 532 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10012.
A high-theoretical quarterly
aimed at both libertarian and non-libertarian intellectuals.
Free Life, 9
Poland Street, London W1V 3DG, England. A hard-core if infrequent libertarian magazine published in Britain.
The
Freeman, 30 South Broadway,
Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533.
Published by the Foundation for Economic
Education (FEE), a venerable
promoter of classical
liberalism. This monthly publication is free upon
request.
Individual Liberty,
P.O. Box 338, Warminster, PA 18974.
Published by the International
Society for Individual Liberty.
This monthly newsletter
contains an assortment of movement news and ideological discussion.
Intellectual Activist, 131
Fifth Avenue, Suite 101,
New York, NY 10003. Current events raked over from a rabidly
Randian perspective.
Journal of Libertarian Studies,
P.O. Box 4091,
Burlingame, CA 94011. An
interdisciplinary scholarly
journal, published by
the Center for Libertarian Studies, that
has fallen somewhat behind but continues
to appear occasionally.
Liberty, http://www.libertyunbound.com.
For many years Liberty,
edited by the
late Bill Bradford, written by libertarians for libertarians,
was my favorite
libertarian magazine. Its archive of past articles, available
at http://www.libertyunbound.com/archivesearch,
is the best primary source I know of for the history of modern
libertarian
ideas. It continues to be published as a free
online magazine.
New Libertarian, 1515
West MacArthur Boulevard
#19, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. Comes out very sporadically
sometimes less
than
once a year. Among
other peculiarities, this publication
offers two
perspectives not found in any
of the other libertarian publications listed:
(1) rabid hostility to the Libertarian Party; (2) blind infatuation with science
fiction.
Nomos, 727
S. Dearborn Street,
Suite 212,
Chicago, IL 60605.
A bimonthly
pitched toward the average libertarian reader.
The
Pragmatist, P.O. Box 392,
Forest Grove, PA 18922.
A bimonthly
that challenges the dominant
natural-rights thinking within the libertarian movement.
In contrast, it is dedicated
to a utilitarian
approach.
Reason, editorial offices:
2716 Ocean Park Boulevard, Suite 1062,
Santa Monica, CA 90405; subscriptions: Box 27977, San Diego, CA 92128. This monthly magazine is one of the longest-operating
libertarian publications. It is now devoted to 'outreach', containing
mainly factual articles
designed to persuade non-libertarians.
Reason
Papers, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, AL 36849.
A scholarly libertarian
journal that
comes out about once a year.
The Voluntaryist. Combines libertarianism with principled
pacifism and non- violent resistance.
Opposes electoral
politics on
principle. Also runs historical articles on
the American
and British
individualist
anarchist tradition.
Webbed at voluntaryist.com.
Organizations
and Institutes
Advocates
for Self-Government.
A grass-roots, chapter-based libertarian
organization. http://www.theadvocates.org/
Cato Institute. A large and
active libertarian
public policy institute.
The Foundation for Economic
Education (FEE). A
libertarian organization that has been around for a very long
time and is still
active. http://www.fee.org.
The Fraser Institute.
A Canadian
free market think tank.
The Friedman Foundation for
Educational Choice.
An organization founded by my parents to promote the idea of
school vouchers.
By the time you read this, Friedman may have been dropped
from its title, due
to my parents expressed reservations about organizations
outliving their
founders but continuing to act in their name.
The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Institute for Economic
Affairs. An influential British free market think
tank.
The Institute for Humane
Studies. A
libertarian organization that runs workshops, at some of which
I have spoken,
funds speakers, provides scholarships and engages in other
educational
activities.
Institute for Justice. A
libertarian public
interest law firm that litigates against a wide range of
government
infringements on individual freedom. The only organization to
which I regularly
contribute money.
The International Society for
Individual Liberty.
Libertarian Alliance.
A British membership organization which combines internal debate with outreach.
It split in two about thirty years ago due to internal
conflicts, with both
halves continuing to use the name. One has a web site.
Libertarian Futurist Society. For libertarian
fans of science-fiction. It publishes a newsletter called Prometheus
and sponsors the Prometheus Award, given to novels promoting
liberty.
Libertarian Party.
In recent years, the LP has been one of the most active
libertarian organizations, running candidates for a variety of offices and getting a good deal
of publicity.
Ludwig Von Mises
Institute:
A libertarian organization with a large presence online. They
tend to follow
the views of Rothbard and,
perhaps as a result, to be
critical of mine. A good source for free ebooks
by
authors they approve of.
National Taxpayers Union. A lobbying
organization
dedicated to reducing
both taxation
and government expenditures.
Property and Environment Research Center. A
research foundation
offering a libertarian approach
to environmental issues.
Students for Liberty.
A lively
student libertarian organization that holds conferences at
some of which I have
spoken.