Statism

Let freedom ring and self-censorship

by Tim Swanson April 25, 2012

Several prominent libertarians, such as Peter Schiff have gone on record suggesting that China is more free-market than the US.  Others such as Jim Rogers (2010 Schlarbaum laureate) has stated that  “America is more communist than China” (video) and that “China isn’t communist” (video) and that “China is not going to be communist ever again” [...]

Read the full article →

Can (big) science survive without taxpayer funds?

by Tim Swanson April 22, 2012

This question was recently answered in length by physicist Steven Weinberg in the NY Review of Books. After a well-written overview of how science projects grew from privately-funded individual labs to publicly-funded international collaborations, Weinberg states that: It seems to me that what is really needed is not more special pleading for one or another [...]

Read the full article →

Obama: more for thee, but not for me

by Brian Martinez April 17, 2012

President Obama pays a lower tax rate than his secretary – the very sort of disparity which, according to his own staff, illustrates why the so-called “Buffett Rule” needs to be implemented so that the wealthy pay more. But Obama won’t consider the idea of simply donating more to the Treasury to address the gap [...]

Read the full article →

LibertariaNation [Italy] Interview with Kinsella on IP and Libertarianism

by Stephan Kinsella April 15, 2012

I was interviewed Feb. 23, 2012, by Fabrizio Sitzia of the Italian libertarian group LibertariaNation.org. It was posted today on YouTube. We discussed intellectual property and related issues such as SOPA, plagiarism, IP-by-contract, and other libertarian issues such as prospects for liberty in the future; the importance of technology, the Internet, and globalism; Ron Paul [...]

Read the full article →

Piñatas lost in space

by Tim Swanson April 14, 2012

Does the North Korean rocket program deserve our scorn? If it does, then all socialized and nationalized programs do. Since the advent of rocketry as an amateur industry, hundreds of technicians and researchers have died trying to vault the political class – and their apparatchiks – of the US, Russia and others into orbit.  The [...]

Read the full article →

What is happening in China?

by Tim Swanson April 13, 2012

[Note: a revised edition of this was originally scheduled to be published in an upcoming newsletter but I have (temporarily) moved back to Shanghai and think all this information should be pushed to a broader audience] On March 15 Bo Xilai, a prominent Party secretary was publicly sacked.  A week later rumors of a coup [...]

Read the full article →

Ebook Price Fixing and Bad Journalism

by Geoffrey Allan Plauché April 12, 2012

You may have heard that the Department of Justice decided to launch antitrust litigation against Apple and some major publishers for alleged price fixing and that most of them decided on the same day to settle. The alleged sin was that Apple and the publishers decided to go with the agency pricing model in which [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →