Radical Economics: An Interview with Walter Block:
There are objections to private roads, but none of them hold water. No, private roads will not cause people to be shut up inside their homes. The economic incentives are the reverse: to get people to drive on them. The reason to own a large capital good like a road is to get people to use it. Similarly, owners of websites want people to access them so they do everything possible to attract attention to themselves.
Speaking of road socialism: Nation’s Infrastructure Crumbling, Experts Say. Be sure to check out the detailed report card too.
I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately and have enjoyed reading through all the AEN interviews. You can get a better understanding of where Austrianism has traveled, as seen through the eyes of dozens of individual academics that had personal and professional relationships with both Mises and Rothbard. Quite fascinating (and free).
Aside from the outbreak of World Wars 1 & 2, several good “what-ifs” that could be batted around:
- What if Mises had moved to America or England prior to the outbreak of WW II and in doing so, manage to save all of his papers that would later be confiscated by the Nazi’s and then by the Soviets (Sennholz suggested that some of Mises’s papers may have actually been stolen in the interim, let alone translate all 40 years worth).
- What if the Foundation for Economic Education had been more proactive in sponsoring and promoting Miseanism/Rothbardianism (would it not have been interesting to have had the relatively temperate FEE become the anarchistic LvMI of today?).
- What if Lachmann had not been invited to NYU in the late ’70s, saving both time and head-aches from his nihilistic uber subjectivism (and employ Rothbard instead…)?
- What if Kirzner, Hayek and Schumpeter had embraced the “radical a prioristic” approach of Mises et al.?
- What if Rand had been more open to building bridges with Rothbard and other libertarian Austrians?
- What if either Menger or Böhm-Bawerk had lived through the ’20s and ’30s to see Mises (and others) develop — and possibly even critique Keynes?
Lastly, I enjoyed this biography by Hayek on Mises. His style and language helped paint a vivid picture of what one great thought of another.
[Photo courtesy of BK Marcus]