READINGS: Walter Block’s “Free Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads”. 1 What is the lethal menace that Block describes in the beginning of his article? The nationalized roadway system. 2 Describe the record of government road management in terms of fatalities? Abysmal. Block walks through some statistics: 46,700 killed on public roads annually, over half a […]
WorldSys: Austrian Home Study Course, Week 23
The World Systems Project is going to begin with a thorough examination of Austrian economics, starting with Robert P. Murphy’s outstanding “Austrian Economics Home Study Course”. The plan is to blog my answers to the weekly questions, with posts and book reviews tossed in as I go along. It should go without saying that the […]
Is Mathematics a Young (Wo)man’s Game?
I began giving the titular question a great deal of thought when, 8 years ago, I took my first stab at learning new mathematical concepts since high school. I was 22, and because I had become interested in issues lying at the foundation of artificial intelligence I decided to pick up a textbook on discrete […]
WorldSys: Austrian Home Study Course, Week 22
READINGS: “The Environmentalist Threat” in Lew Rockwell’s The Economics of Liberty 1 How is the environmentalist movement similar to Marxism? It’s a utopian, absolutist constellation of ideas nestled firmly within Leftism and perfectly comfortable with outrageous violations of basic civil liberties. 2 Whom does Rockwell consider the father of environmentalism? Jean-Jacques Rosseau. 3 Aren’t extreme […]
The Structure of Science as a Gnostic Manifold
Part I While reading Paul Rosenbloom’s excellent “On Computing” I feel as though I’ve glimpsed the outlines of something big. In the book Rosenbloom advances the argument that computing should be counted among the ‘Great Domains’ of science, instead of being considered a mere branch of engineering. During the course of advancing this thesis he […]
WorldSys: Austrian Home Study Course, week 21
READINGS: Chapter 9 of Robert Higgs’s Against Leviathan, ‘Private Law’ chapter of Bob Murphy’s Chaos Theory 1 Is it reasonable to require that a medical product be completely safe? No, all any certifying agency can hope to do is ensure that medical products are as safe as possible and that the manufacturer is not making […]
WorldSys: Austrian Home Study Course, Week 20
READINGS: Chapter 4 of Gene Callahan’s Economics for Real People; Chapter 5 of Holcombe et al.’s Fifteen Great Austrians (a chapter on French economist Frederic Bastiat) 1 What is the law of association? It was the term given by Mises to the broader application of the ‘law of comparative advantage’ to all human cooperation, on […]
