Monthly Archives: January 2012

We are governed by children

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

If any further evidence we needed that we are ruled by children, here it is. If we had an effective opposition they’d be telling us that Cameron has more important things to be doing than worrying about the price of … Continue reading →

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Quote of the day

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its … Continue reading →

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Can you build a toaster from scratch?

Posted on January 25, 2012 by

“Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.” Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim … Continue reading →

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The failings of the dead tree press

Posted on January 23, 2012 by

It seems our beloved mainstream media can’t decide whether to ignore the EU dimension in British politics, or instead to invent an EU dimension when one doesn’t exist. Richard North, never to have spoken a kind word about the fourth … Continue reading →

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I couldn’t have put it better myself

Posted on January 18, 2012 by

What is worse, the [Olympic] games are corrupt in moral terms because they rely on the coercive deployment of resources by government. Whether or not we like watching people hop, skip and jump, we are forced, on pain of going … Continue reading →

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Austrian ideas on the BBC

Posted on January 18, 2012 by

One of the consequences of the housing bust was a renewed interest in the Austrian school of economics – sales of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom soared, and once marginalised ideas are now becoming reconsidered. We naturally seek alternative explanations when things go tits … Continue reading →

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On Austrian economics

Posted on January 17, 2012 by

Most standard economics assumes that the relationships we are trying to understand can be captured by a continuous function that’s smooth and twice differentiable. What the Austrian analytics suggests is that life is not actually a continuous and smooth function … Continue reading →

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Quote of the day

Posted on January 16, 2012 by

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to … Continue reading →

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Who predicted the Great Recession?

Posted on January 16, 2012 by

As I discussed in a recent post, we need to be sure what caused the Great Recession if we are to decide upon the best means to return to a growing economy and reduce unemployment. In this light, it’s worth … Continue reading →

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Upcoming documentary on the Great Recession

Posted on January 13, 2012 by

I’m excited to hear of an upcoming Spanish documentary giving an Austrian explanation for the Great Recession (as we seem to be calling it now). It looks to be in the same vein as Overdose which I highlighted last year. I … Continue reading →

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