From Left Liberal to FLOW Libertarian
An Annotated Bibliography
Michael Strong
CEO and Chief Visionary Officer, FLOW, Inc.
A Gestalt Shift
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
This bibliography is a tool for those who are interested in experiencing a gestalt shift.
The familiar image above allows one to experience a visual gestalt shift: One can learn
to shift from an old woman looking down into her fur coat to a young woman looking
away and back again.
Likewise, those who are interested in understanding different ways of looking at the
political and economic structures of our society might be interested in learning how to
make a gestalt shift from left-liberalism to libertarianism and back again. Until and
unless one has understood both interpretations of the world, one doesn’t fully understand
the various ways in which evidence may be interpreted in different frameworks.
Unfortunately, it takes some work, some reading, some thought, and some conversation,
to lead to understand a different politico-economic gestalt. For those who are interested
in experiencing such a gestalt shift, this bibliography may serve as a guide.
3/8/16
1
My Gestalt Shift
I am a left liberal who became a libertarian strictly as a consequence of new intellectual
understandings. That is, I have exactly the same ideals, morals, goals, and values as I did
when I was a left liberal. But I moved away from left liberalism and towards
libertarianism because I came to believe that libertarian approaches would be more
effective at achieving my ideals than would left liberal approaches. Given that my goals
and ideals continue to be those of a left liberal, there are many of my positions and
priorities that differ from those of some mainstream libertarians. Thus my position may
be better described as “left libertarian” or “communitarian libertarian” or “FLOW
libertarian,” in recognition of the non-profit that I head devoted to promoting these ideas.
For a general perspective on FLOW’s origins and rationale, see
John Mackey, “Winning the Battle for Freedom and Prosperity”
http://www.flowidealism.org/john.html
There are several other FLOW-related articles by John at that URL. For a more personal
statement of my perspective, see
Michael Strong, “Taking the Left out of Liberal”
http://www.flowidealism.org/michael.html
My FLOW related articles, including most of those listed below, are available at that
URL.
This is an annotated bibliography for the intellectually serious left-liberal who may be
engaging libertarian ideas seriously for the first time. It’s organization follows the main
themes that were key to my own conversion from left-liberal to libertarian:
1. Public choice theory
2. Creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship
3. Property rights solutions to tragedy of the commons problems
4. Economic freedom leads to peace and prosperity for all
5. Liberating entrepreneurs in health, education, insurance, community formation, and
law
6. The poor in the developed world
7. Prediction as an intellectual standard
8. Academic fallibility
9. History
10. 20th Century Libertarian Classics
I welcome questions, comments, and recommendations for additional readings.
I have not included here resources on entrepreneurship, positive entrepreneurship,
Conscious Capitalism, and other topics that focus on the increasing capacity for
3/8/16
2
entrepreneurs and business to engage in doing good directly. For a brief orientation to
the issues in this debate, and how John Mackey explicitly disagrees with Milton
Friedman on this topic, see
John Mackey, Milton Friedman, T. J. Rodgers debate at Reason Magazine, “Rethinking
the Social Responsibility of Business,” reprinted here at John’s Whole Foods Market
blog,
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jm/archives/2005/09/rethinking_the.html
Before providing materials relevant to the shift, a few orienting thoughts to help leftliberals begin to consider such a shift:
1. Scandinavia regulates business less, and has more economic freedoms, than the entire
developing world. Poverty is caused by a lack of economic freedom, and the probability
of civil war decreases dramatically as societies become more prosperous, so in order to
eliminate poverty and reduce the probability of violent conflict our first priority should be
to get the developing world at least as free market as Scandinavia.
2. Peter Barnes’ Capitalism 3.0, endorsed by leading progressives, promotes property
rights solutions to tragedy of the commons problems. In essence, this is a “free market
environmentalism” solution that has now become accepted by leading progressives and
environmentalists as a way to solve environmental problems.
3. Improving education is the most urgent means of helping the U.S. poor while also
moving American culture beyond materialism, consumerism, and addictive behaviors. In
order to improve education, we need to allow innovative educators the autonomy to
innovate. We need to liberate educational entrepreneurs to solve our most urgent
problems, and that cannot be done through the existing educational bureaucracy.
At present, it is easier to innovate in the gambling and pornography industries than it is in
the education industry.
One on one it is not difficult to get informed left-liberals to accept each point above once
they see the data and understand key concepts. Once they develop a firm moral
commitment to each of the foregoing, completely honorable goals, if they are willing to
learn how to make the Gestalt shift into a libertarian understanding, most will never shift
back completely to their old left-liberal paradigm. I hope that many will join me in
creating a left libertarian idealism that achieves their ideals more effectively and more
quickly than 20th century leftist thought ever could.
Let me know if a link doesn’t work or if you can’t find something there. I may be
contacted at Michael@flowidealism.org.
1. Public choice theory
3/8/16
3
The left is often animated by the various harms and crimes committed by large
corporations. Leftists experience a tremendous sense of outrage at the fact that under
capitalism not only do bad people get away with doing bad things, they often become rich
and powerful by means of doing so. Worse yet, under capitalism often highly decent,
hard-working human beings are harmed by these evil people, and are impoverished, or
may be actively harmed by the actions of evil, rich capitalists.
Coming from an honorable and authentic moral sensibility, Leftists then devote
themselves to fighting capitalism; the past two centuries have seen a diverse array of
Leftist initiatives designed to defeat these injustices, including Marxism, democratic
socialism, and the welfare state. I remain interested in eliminating these injustices, but
am now more wary of certain kinds of government action which, I believe, tends to make
the situation worse rather than better.
The implicit assumption on which Leftist beliefs are founded is that the initiatives
designed by the Left to counteract the harms done by capitalism do more good than harm.
In the case of Marxism, almost everyone now agrees that the “cure,” Marxism, was worse
than the “disease,” capitalism. But “public choice theory” provides a powerful way of
understanding government that shows why the “cure” of government action can be worse
than the “disease” of capitalism. For a simple rule of thumb, I would suggest that
government actions that improve the rules of the game can improve capitalism, but
government actions that involve government trying to control the system directly (rather
than re-structuring the rules) is almost always harmful. Often I find myself in agreement
with solidly Democratic economists, who would never describe themselves as libertarian,
because they understand the distinction between re-structuring the rules rather than trying
to control the system directly.
Section V of
Michael Strong and John Mackey, Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit for Good
sketches some of the rule-based policy moves that I regard as most effective at
eliminating these injustices.
For an excellent bi-partisan introduction to public choice theory, see
Jonathan Rauch, Government’s End: Why Washington Stopped Working
Endorsed by Democrats David Broder, Daniel Patrik Moynihan, and Bill Bradley, it
describes how special interests have made progress in government nearly impossible.
Rauch does an excellent job of introducing the fundamental public choice theme of the
arithmetic of focus: special interests have an incentive to devote extraordinary resources
to fine details of legislation and regulation, whereas the rest of us, even the most
motivated citizens among us, can’t possibly understand even a tiny fraction of
government’s activities.
3/8/16
4
For a more insidious view of the numerous ways in which special interests are working to
control government, see
Charlotte Twight, Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of
Ordinary Americans
Twight’s book makes clear that the means through which special interests insinuate
control to protect their own turf is limited only by the bounds of human creativity. She
documents numerous details concerning how special rules, laws, and regulations are
passed that benefit special interests.
David Malin Roodman, The Natural Wealth of Nations: Harnessing the Market for the
Environment
Published by The Worldwatch Institute, shows how cutting environmentally harmful
subsidies could result in a $2,000 tax refund to every family in America. Although
Roodman’s book is mainstream environmentalism rather than public choice theory, as
one reads about these dozens of subsidies from a public choice perspective one can’t help
but note that most of the subsidies were advocated by the left-liberal establishment
decades ago and, as public choice theory predicts, the have quietly metastastised into
enormous corporate subsidies through which government pays companies to destroy the
environment.
The Green Scissors Campaign
http://www.greenscissors.org/
is a joint lobbying effort between tax cutters and environmentalists to try to eliminate
environmentally-damaging subsidies.
For a more theoretical, but still readable, approach to public choice theory, see
James Buchanan, Public Choice: Politics without Romance
Buchanan won a Nobel Prize for creating the field of public choice theory, according to
which voters, politicians, bureaucrats, and judges all act in accordance with the incentives
they face based on the limited information at hand. Buchanan’s original work in public
choice theory was done with Gordon Tullock, who also has a readable volume on public
choice theory,
Gordon Tullock, Gordon Brady, and Arthur Seldon, Government Failure: A Primer in
Public Choice
I’ve not yet read
Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter
3/8/16
5
But based on an earlier article by Caplan on which the book is based, it sounds like an
excellent, accessible addition to the public choice literature. Much is made of the ways in
which it disagrees with mainstream public choice literature, but I see Caplan’s thesis as
more of a complement to mainstream public choice. Caplan is focusing on the extent to
which our moral intuitions evolved to prefer statist policy “solutions,” without
understanding how damaging they are, a theme that Hayek developed and that
evolutionary psychology is confirming.
The great insight of public choice theory is that just as markets sometimes fail to perform
in accordance with the theoretical ideal of markets, due to systematic, identifiable
shortcomings, so too do democratic governments sometimes fail to perform in
accordance with the theoretical ideal of democracy. Once one starts to examine the
actual incentives faced by government actors along with the information available to
them, it becomes apparent that the systematic flaws of democratic government are
pervasive and non-trivial.
`
This does not mean that we should give up altogether on democracy, but it does mean
that we need to develop more realistic expectations regarding the types of problems that it
is likely to be able to solve. Most people who study public choice theory become more
libertarian than they were before simply because they come to realize that many outrages
that one sees in government are not simply due to this or that politician or bureaucrat, but
rather chronic problems that are likely to take place in any large-scale democratic
government. And scale matters – part of the challenge of democratic decision-making is
information. Small, local democratic government is apt to work better than does large,
pluralistic government because the informational demands expand exponentially. As a
consequence of this scale issue, I am far more in favor of government action at the local
level than I am at the national level.
Finally, it is worth being aware of F. A. Hayek’s most famous work,
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
For me personally it is one of my least favorite pieces by Hayek. It is both dated and
polemical. That said, as long as one understands that he was writing about an
interpretation of socialism in which the government attempted to control all prices and
production, it stands as an effective analysis for why such a system of comprehensive
control will always tend to result in the worst people rising to the top. A good antidote to
those Marxists who want to claim “We didn’t know that the bad people would lead
communist regimes.” Hayek explained quite clearly, in 1944, why we should expect that
socialism, understood as total state control of the economy, should consistently result in
the bad people gaining power in such regimes.
While I’ve not read it, I understand that
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed
3/8/16
6
Is, in effect, a left-liberal safe version of Hayek and public choice theory. Although he
overtly disavows Hayek, by all accounts Scott is merely Hayek lite. Academic bigotry
prevents him from acknowledging his legitimate predecessors from the free market
movement, even as intellectual honesty compels him to admit their conclusions were
valid.
A short history of 20th century economic and political thought might be summarized as:
1. Market Failure! Markets don’t work as well as the classical economists thought and
therefore we must control them (1900 – 1960)
2. Government Failure! Governments don’t work as well as democratic theorists
thought, and therefore we can’t depend on them to do the right thing either (1960 – 2000)
Regardless of what one thinks regarding the relative role of markets and government, it is
important to understand the public choice theory, the theory that explains why
governments systematically, predictably put special interests before the public interest.
2. Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
This is far and away a more exciting and uplifting topic. The most important case for
freedom of action is that it is essential for allowing a creative, innovative, entrepreneurial
society. Millions of individuals, all free to create new enterprises, will in time always
outperform a cumbersome, contentious political process. The political process can only
make a few decisions from time to time, and the range of decision options is always
limited by the real constraints faced by the political agents involved. The entire point of
“free enterprise” is that anyone can start something up and see if it works. The entire rise
of the late 20th century IT industry in the U.S. is a tremendous validation of the
innovative powers of the free enterprise system.
Remarkably, and sadly, relatively little has been written on this. Economists (and other
social scientists) almost all ignore innovation because ex ante it doesn’t exist – all
empirical studies ipso facto ignore prospective innovation. This is a banal thought that
nonetheless stands as a profound indictment of empirical social science except for those
very rare cases in which the social scientists explicitly take the possibility of innovation
into account (please send me examples of such social science when you find them – they
are very rare and I want to create a museum of such exotic species).
A great place to start is
Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies
Endorsed by good Democratic stalwarts and cool Silicon Valley gurus Steward Brand
and Esther Dyson. Postrel shows that both the Left and the Right are hostile to
innovation, and the importance of innovators to support an open system that will allow
3/8/16
7
innovation to continue to improve our lives going into the future. Postrel’s book stands
as a sort of pop version of Hayek.
Earlier I referenced our formal statement of FLOW, which includes much emphasis on
entrepreneurial innovation for the good,
Michael Strong and John Mackey, Liberating the Entrepreneurial Spirit for Good
As of Nov. 2007 it is mostly complete and mostly posted on our website. We are
finishing up sections of this each month, so check back if a section is missing. We expect
to publish it in book form in 2008.
For a good interview with Paul Romer, the leading contemporary economist dealing with
innovation, see
Ronald Bailey, “Post-Scarcity Prophet”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28243.html
It is noteworthy that Romer’s introduction of innovation into formal economics really
only took place in the 1990s – this shows how neglected the topic was in economics prior
to that.
Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Addresses the issue of innovation and entrepreneurship from a management perspective;
as such he provides an excellent overview of the possibilities and obstacles to launching
new innovations.
The core text on this theme, virtually a sacred text for me, is
F. A. Hayek, “The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization,”
Available as the second chapter of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty or I will send you
a text file copy if you are interested. Hayek shows that the case for freedom of action is
structurally identical to J.S. Mill’s case for freedom of speech. Just as freedom of speech
is crucial if you believe that there is still more to learn and discover in the realm of
thought, so too is Hayek’s article crucial for understanding that freedom of action is
crucial if you believe there is still more to learn and discover in the realm of action.
My essay
Michael Strong, “Perceptual Salience and the Creative Powers of a Free Civilization”
Connects Hayek’s epistemology with his political theory; somewhat heavy going, but it
may entice those to learn more about his theory of the mind, which has since been used
3/8/16
8
by brain researchers (his theory is similar to the better known Hebb connectionist model
on which contemporary neural networks are, in part, based).
Most Americans would probably claim that they support the idea of innovation; but until
one has grasped the full Hayekian scheme, one does not generally understand the extent
to which innovation is profoundly dependent on an entire ecosystem of institutions and
the price signals that are generated by those institutions. For more on the Hayekian
theory of information and knowledge, see
F.A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”
F.A. Hayek, “Economics and Knowledge”
F.A. Hayek, “Competition as a Discovery Process”
It is interesting that Hayek was regarded as “right-wing” and “reactionary” throughout
much of the 20th century, despite the fact that in his 1960 classic, “The Constitution of
Liberty,” he conceded the entire welfare state and wrote an epilogue, worth reading, titled
F.A. Hayek, “Why I Am Not a Conservative”
More than anything, Hayek believed in the freedom to innovate and he had a deep
understanding of the institutions needed to support innovation.
For an application of Hayekian creativity to education, see
Michael Strong, “The Creation of Conscious Culture through Educational Innovation”
For an interesting independent interpretation of free enterprise as a fantastic system for
innovation, see
Michael Rothschild, Bionomics
A few sections are slightly dated, but his examples are so well done that it is well worth
reading nonetheless.
George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty
Is even more dated, and I hesitate to include it only because some sections may no longer
be worth reading, but it was an important historical book in that it made the case for the
innovative power of the market economy in 1981, before the tech revolution really hit its
stride, and his book was a significant influence on the Reagan and Thatcher political
revolutions. It is worth noting that in 1968 Gailbraith claimed the age of
entrepreneurship was over.
I highly recommend
Frederick Turner, “Make Everybody Rich”
3/8/16
9
http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=16&articleID=124
Why don’t governments enact policies that would make everyone rich?
Universal prosperity would not make everyone happier, but it would
greatly advance the causes of world peace, environmental protection,
education, health care, women’s rights, employment, sustainable growth,
racial harmony, political liberty, scientific discovery, spiritual renewal and
the arts.
A slightly tongue-in-cheek essay that points out that upper income people tend to place a
higher value on the environment, education, culture and the arts, etc. and can afford to
devote resources to these problems, and that therefore the single most effective solution
to most problems is to “Make Everybody Rich.” He points out that if 20th century U.S.
rates of economic growth continue into the 21st century, the average American household
income for a family of four in 2100 will be $320,000. Despite his ironic tone, Turner is
correct that we should “Make Everybody Rich” and that economic growth is the way to
do it.
Ernesto Sirolli, Ripples from the Zambezi: Passion, Entrepreneurship, and the Rebirth of
Local Economies
Is an inspiring statement by a follower of E.F. Schumacher on how nurturing spontaneous
passion towards entrepreneurship is the real solution to helping disadvantaged
communities, not government programs. Sirolli describes his successes in helping people
in depressed communities create successful businesses that turn the communities around.
There are various books that attempt to apply complexity theory and chaos theory to
society that are unwittingly quasi-Hayekian but because they are not aware of it they are
not worth mentioning here. But at some point someone needs to write a book showing
the extent to which Hayek’s insights on innovation foreshadowed some of the work being
done at, for instance, the Santa Fe Institute of Complexity.
Paul Ormerod, Butterfly Economics: A New General Theory of Social and Economic
Behavior
Looks to complexity theory and chaos theory to sketch a “new general theory.” While
there is much interesting material here, to some extent it amounts to a new way to
articulate Hayekian insights.
Hayek’s epistemology is in many respects similar to
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge, an Evolutionary Approach
And Donald T. Campbell’s work on evolutionary epistemology. Indeed, the cumulative
insights of Hayek, Popper, and Campbell have barely begun to be elaborated. Academia
3/8/16
10
will be a far richer place the more deeply the concepts of evolutionary epistemology are
integrated into the humanities and social sciences in the 21st century.
For many on the left, my emphasis on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship seems
like a no-brainer – of course these things should be supported. But creativity, innovation,
and entrepreneurship are crucially dependent on freedom. One of the reasons I became a
libertarian is the realization that I care more about making peoples’ lives better than I
cared about “social justice” or tracking down bad people who made money being bad.
While I remain interested in reputation systems to ensure that bad people less frequently
get away with getting rich by being bad, I have decided that it is far more important to
focus on making lives better than to focus on prosecuting the bad. I believe with
increased freedom we can create peace, prosperity, happiness, and well-being for all,
rapidly, in an environmentally sustainable world, and this goal is far more valuable than
is the goal of fighting bad guys who happen to get rich through pandering and deceit.
3. Property Rights Solutions to Tragedy of the Commons Problems
Environmental issues now motivate many of those who are hostile to markets. It is little
known that free market economists developed a robust analysis for how to create
environmental sustainability many decades ago. Ever since Garrett Hardin analyzed the
concept of “Tragedy of the Commons” in the late 60s, economists have seen that a lack
of property rights was the problem and that well-defined property rights would be the
solution. Hardin pointed out that in a situation in which resources were unowned, such
as a fishery or a free pasture, each fisherman or rancher would have an incentive to overfish or over-graze, thereby destroying “the commons.” Hardin and other economists have
pointed out that the solution to such a problem is to make sure all resources are owned,
because commons, or “common pool resources,” will generally be abused. The usual
way in which we ensure that the resources are owned is to grant property rights to
individual fishermen or ranchers that designate some specific ownership share of what
was formerly the commons so that they have an incentive to preserve the long-term value
of the resources that they own.
For diverse applications of this notion, see
Terry Anderson, Free Market Environmentalism
Most progressives and environmentalists will be put off, even horrified, by some of
Anderson’s solutions, however, so his book should be read more for curiosity’s sake
rather than to feel secure about the ability of free market environmentalism to solve
problems.
A far more appealing approach to progressives and environmentalists (which will disgust
conservatives and libertarians) is
Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0
3/8/16
11
Barnes is very much a progressive environmentalist writing a book for progressive
environmentalists. His concept of “environmental trusts” allows for a property rights
solution to tragedy of the commons problems that avoids outright privatization (that
which repels most progressives regarding property rights solutions to tragedy of the
commons problems.)
A great short essay by Barnes, that contains the most important elements of his thought is
available from the E.F. Schumacher Society:
http://www.schumachersociety.org/publications/barnes_03.html
For a general overview that explains why market-based solutions are more effective, see
Michael Strong, “Sustainability in a Bright Green Future”
A little noticed fact is that, over the past forty years as the environmental movement has
matured, many leading environmentalists and environmental groups have become
increasingly drawn to market mechanisms to solve environmental problems simply
because they are more effective. For example,

The Environmental Defense Fund advocates pollution trading rights

Worldwatch endorses a green tax shift

The Rocky Mountain Institute endorses a green tax shift

Jeffery Smith, a Green Party founder, now focuses on land taxes, as do many
local Green Party chapters

Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace founder, now supports various market mechanisms
When one talks to these individuals or reads their stories, one hears a story of how deeper
study of environmental policy resulted in an understanding that market mechanisms are
simply more effective at reducing environmental harms.
Although not specifically about environmental issues,
Stephen Rhoads, The Economist’s View of the World: Governments, Markets, and Public
Policy
Provides a great summary of the economist’s perspective from a “New Democratic”
(Gary Hart, Bill Clinton) perspective, including both the positives and negatives of the
economist’s perspective. He shows why, by the 1980s, policy wonk Democrats were
looking to market solutions to solve environmental problems as well as to solve problems
in other areas.
3/8/16
12
It is also worth pointing to the literature showing the various ways in which
environmental harms have often been exaggerated in the past. For instance,
Bjorn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist
Has abundant data showing that things are not as bad as alarmists often portray them as
being. Scientific American did a hatchet job on Lomborg, and I think it is incumbent
upon the fair reader to read both their attacks and his defenses. Although there are
clearly places where Lomborg made mistakes, on balance I think he looks even better
after their attacks than before.
Jack Hollander, The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, is the
Environment’s Number One Enemy
Is a very compelling, sane book showing the various ways in which the environment
typically improves as countries become wealthier.
John McCarthy, “Sustainability of Human Progress,”
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/sustainability-faq.html
is a slightly dated website with diverse original material on why McCarthy is an optimist
with respect to human progress.
Lomborg, Hollander, and McCarthy all make arguments that are extremely unpopular
among environmentalists, but they should not therefore be completely ignored. They
may not be correct in every detail, but given the saturation we receive from mainstream
media sources regarding environmental catastrophe, they put things in some much needed
perspective.
Gregg Easterbrook, The Progress Paradox
Is more of a mainstream left-liberal safe summary of much of the same data that have
caused Lomborg, Hollander, and McCarthy to be roasted alive – Easterbrook gets away
with saying many of the same things simply because he aggressively demonstrates his
left-liberal bonafides in various ways.
For a more courageous left-liberal who is open concerning his heretical beliefs, see
Steward Brand, “Four Environmental Heresies”
He predicts (again, to his credit, whether he is right or wrong) that in the next decade
environmentalists will shift ground with respect to their beliefs regarding population
growth (no longer really an issue), urbanization (good), nuclear power (good), and
genetically modified foods (good).
Finally, for the truly brave at heart, check out
3/8/16
13
Paul Driessen, Eco-Terror: Green Power, Black Death
Driessen pulls no punches in summarizing the various ways in which the environmental
movement has caused death and exacerbated poverty in the developing world. The
environmental movement’s opposition to the use of DDT for fighting malaria plays
prominently in this, but before dismissing this movement note that among the supporters
of a renewed role for DDT in malarial control are Ralph Nader, Desmond Tutu, Lancet,
and the World Health Organization. Environmentalists are outraged by the claims of
Driessen and others that they are responsible for millions of malarial deaths, but there is
very solid evidence that tens of thousands died unnecessarily, a strong case that the
number extends into the hundreds of thousands, and fair likelihood that it could well have
been millions.
A humorous but still hard-hitting look at the dark side of environmentalism is the DVD
Mine Your Own Business
Showing that environmentalist opposition to mining operations in poor nations is often
resented by locals who want jobs.
4. Economic Freedom Leads to Peace and Prosperity
A good place to start here is with
Michael Strong and Theodore Malloch, “Economic Freedom as Development Goal”
And
Michael Strong and Theodore Malloch, “Betting on a Brighter Future: Millenium
Villages or Free Cities?”
Both available from me.
For deeper background, see the most recent Fraser Institute Economic Freedom of the
World Report, especially the essays contained in the 2005 report (by Erik Gartzke on
peace and economic freedom) and the 2006 report (by William Easterly on economic
freedom and poverty alleviation):
http://www.freetheworld.com/
This and the footnotes to the Strong and Malloch paper will lead to a rich, well
documented literature on the subject.
Johan Norberg, In Defense of Global Capitalism
3/8/16
14
Is, to a considerable extent, a reader-friendly summary of many of the findings in the
Economic Freedom of the World Reports.
Everyone should read
William Easterly, White Man’s Burden
About the failure of foreign aid and the need for “searchers” rather than “planners” as
well as
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and
Fails Everywhere Else
De Soto should win a Nobel Peace Prize soon. Bill Clinton describes his organization in
Peru as “the most effective poverty alleviation organization in the world,” and I think
Clinton is correct. One should also read the book by De Soto’s friend
Mohammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor
The famous story of Yunus’ founding of Grameen Bank.
And to watch
PBS, Free to Choose
PBS, Commanding Heights
PBS deserves credit for broadcasting both of these gems.
More academic, but still crucial reading, is
Douglass North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change
North is a Nobel laureate economic historian whose work re-focused economists on the
role of key institutions: property rights and rule of law, but in the context of a
sophisticated analysis of the interplay between cognition, culture, law, and economic
actors.
Gurcharan Das, India Unbound
Is a beautiful, sad account of how Nehruvian socialism perpetuated poverty with the best
of intentions, and how free market reforms in the 1990s created dynamism and wealth in
India. Das, who became head of P&G India, has deep sympathies for the spiritual side of
India, and wants to preserve both Indian spirituality and free market dynamism going
forward.
I haven’t read it in twenty years, but key to my own conversion was
3/8/16
15
Peter Berger, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality,
and Liberty
See also
Michael Strong, “Forget the World Bank, Try Wal-Mart”
On Wal-Mart as the world’s single most effective anti-poverty organization. Although
this article brought me a lot of hate mail from Wal-Mart haters, not one of them disputed
any of the data I produced in making my case.
On the peace side of the equation, see,
Michael Strong, “A Million Paths to Peace”
And
Michael Strong, “Understanding the Power of Economic Freedom to Create Peace”
There is a statistical social science literature on this and a historical classical liberal
literature on this for interested parties. Erik Gartzke is a leading social science scholar
doing work in this area; Gartke’s work is great if you like to read regression analyses.
For more of an international relations perspective, from a world-class scholar, see
Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas That Conquered the World
For a moderately politically incorrect (simply due to his frank endorsement of
Anglosphere institutions and culture) but quite fascinating idiosyncratic study of the role
of market economies in the 21st century, see
James C. Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will
Lead the Way in the 21st Century
Bennett may or may not be correct, but he summarizes much interesting literature from
diverse sources that is relevant to these issues but not available from standard disciplinary
works in economics or political science.
For those interested in the story of Africa’s extreme poverty, it is well worth reading
Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa
For an intelligent account of western failures towards Africa,
George Ayittey, Africa Unchained
3/8/16
16
Ayittey also includes an aggressive defense of traditional African institutions, including
African markets and tribal chiefs, as providing a more appropriate foundation for African
development, rooted in indigenous African notions of economic freedom, than the alien
ideologies imposed on Africa by socialist elites upon independence. Ayittey is a westerntrained Ghanan economist who intelligently integrates western economic understanding
with understanding of, and love for, indigenous African institutions.
Finally, I’ll recommend two more short articles by me that address related issues not
dealt with elsewhere in this list:
Michael Strong, “Milton Friedman, A Modern Galileo”
Michael Strong, “Developing a New Standard of Social Justice”
5. Liberating entrepreneurs in health, education, insurance, community formation,
and law
This is an area that has not received adequate attention, though if one digs into the
libertarian literature one can find fascinating gems in this area. A good place to start is
David Beito, Peter Gordon, and Aledander Tabarrok, The Voluntary City: Choice,
Community, and Civil Society
Former California Governor Jerry Brown, currently Mayor of Oakland, endorses it saying
“The exciting and pioneering book, The Voluntary City, sketches out a
provocative vision for communities based on civil cooperation and
entrepreneurship. Drawing upon a fascinating history of city innovations,
the book shows why the de-bureaucratization of urban life is crucial to
fostering thriving markets, vibrant neighborhoods and educational
excellence. A book worth reading.”
For more on voluntary aid systems see
David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
And
Richard Cornuelle, Reclaiming the American Dream
Cornuelle’s work was endorsed by Saul Alinsky, the famous Leftist community organizer
from the 1960s. See
Howard Husock, “New Philanthropists Talk Left, Act Right”
3/8/16
17
On the similarities between the new social entrepreneurship movement and earlier civil
society principles long advocated by libertarians and conservatives and described by
Cornuelle and Beito (above).
It is also worth reading the complaint by organic farmer
Joel Salatin, “Everything I Want to Do is Illegal”
To get a sense of how ordinary people wanting to do good projects are thwarted by
government at every turn.
For a very mainstream Harvard Business Review article on the concept of disruptive
innovation for social change, see
Clayton Christensen, Heiner Baumann, Rudy Ruggles, and Thomas Sadtler, “Disruptive
Innovation for Social Change”
I wrote Clayton after I saw the article and pointed out to him he should have been more
aggressive about the need to “legalize entrepreneurs of happiness and well-being” and he
completely agreed with both my perspective and language and said he wished he had
thought of it.
With respect to education to I am in some respects a pioneer in writing about the
importance of educational freedom for educational entrepreneurship. Many free market
authors have, of course, written about the possibility of educational entrepreneurship, but
I am one of the very few who has actually started innovative schools.
That said,
John Taylor Gatto, “Seven Lesson School Teacher”
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
is a crucial prerequisite to understanding the real issues in education. Gatto fans will
want to get
John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory
Schooling
Which is excellent in perspective, but somewhat repetitive.
See
David Skinner, “Libertarian Liberals: When the Left was Right,”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MJG/is_4_5/ai_n15950344
3/8/16
18
On the 1960s history of anti-establishment educational radicalism, starting with Ivan
Illich but going well beyond Illich.
Many of my articles on education address the issue of innovation in education. See
Michael Strong, Ten School Designs
Michael Strong, A Tale of Two Charter Schools
Michael Strong, The Dyson Vacuum Cleaner and Educational Innovation
Michael Strong, Why We Don’t Have a Silicon Valley of Education
Michael Strong, Legalizing Markets in Happiness and Well-Being, Part I
Michael Strong, Legalizing Markets in Happiness and Well-Being, Part II
Michael Strong, Why Do We Have Better Product Information on Sports Cars than We
Do on Schools?
Michael Strong, Renewing the Promise of Montessori Education
Michael Strong, How to Avoid Wasting $60 Billion in K-12 Educational Philanthropy
Already referenced, but important along these lines as well, is
Michael Strong, “The Creation of Conscious Culture Through Educational Innovation”
Finally, a very important work that takes off flying in a direction that is profoundly
interesting to me is
Spencer MacCullum, “The Enterprise of Community”
MacCullum finished an important book by Van Notten on how to develop modern
commercial law from traditional Somali tribal law; see
Michael Van Notten, The Law of the Somalis
For a fascinating anthropological approach that connects the tribal with the modern. Van
Notten married a Somali woman and lived for many years within her clan; he understands
both worlds from the inside out.
Bruce Benson, The Enterprise of Law
Starts with an analysis of tribal law and then shows how a free market legal system more
closely approximates many of the original benefits of tribal law. He also has a great deal
of valuable material on more dreadful public choice shenanigans in our existing legal
system.
6. The Poor in the Developed World
When I began investigating free market economics, I was very focused on economic
injustice and inequality. Once I realized that free enterprise is the fundamental engine
behind economic growth, and thus the alleviation of poverty and misery, I became less
3/8/16
19
concerned about “economic injustice” because I realized poverty alleviation was more
important than the distribution of income. As I realized that government action often had
unintended consequences, I became even less enthusiastic about using government to
address economic inequality. That said, I had a profound commitment to increasing
social mobility, which is one of the reasons I became professionally involved in K-12
education. If one believes that the poor ought to have the same opportunities as the rich,
then one ought to do something about it, and I spent fifteen years doing something about
it (until the system kicked me out a second time despite having proven that I could
educate poor kids far more effectively than existing public schools).
Thus for me, the single most important means of helping the poor in the developed world
is to legalize access to good education, through charter schools, virtual schools, school
vouchers, education tax credits, and ultimately through the separation of school and state.
The government education monopoly is a cruel enforcer of class hierarchies that will
someday be regarded with the same horror as 19th century child factory labor is regarded
today.
Beyond legalizing markets in happiness and well-being, I also support legalizing
affordable housing. See
Michael Strong, “Getting Serious About Helping the U.S. Poor”
To address the many myths about a “declining working class standard of living,” see
W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, Myths of Rich and Poor
Beyond the power of innovation to provide endlessly better goods for all at endlessly
lower prices, I am open to various forms of a “Citizen’s Dividend” to help the poor in the
developed world. For instance,
Charles Murray, In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State
Promotes the idea of giving every American citizen $10,000 each year – and also
eliminating the welfare state as we know it.
Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0
Mentioned above, promotes giving each citizen a dividend based on their share of
resources sold by publicly held environmental trusts.
There are also various Georgist approaches to helping the poor. Henry George was a 19th
century economist and social reformer whose ideas were widely discussed for several
decades, until the conventional Left vs. Right political battles drowned out his more
sensible perspectives. Georgists promote the idea of taxing land, but not the development
on the land, as well as not taxing income, savings, or investment. It turns out that this has
profound implications. Simply to address the issue of helping the developed world poor,
3/8/16
20
it is worth noting that Hong Kong and Singapore both have significant government
control of land and government subsidized housing markets – and yet they are ranked as
the two most free market nations on earth and are the two most successful stories of
nations in terms of economic growth over the past forty years.
One could be a Georgist libertarian and endorse a significant Citizen’s Dividend based on
land taxes that would ensure a comfortable base salary for the poor, and yet still promote
as free market an economy as one pleased. For one practical sketch that moves in this
direction, see
Jeffery Smith, “Geonomics: The Citizen’s Dividend Liberates Everyone”
Smith was a founder of the Green Party who became more of a Georgist the more deeply
he studied the incentive structure of society and realized that the real issues were all
driven at that level.
The conflict between libertarians and those concerned with the poor has been an
unfortunate red herring – it is all too rarely acknowledged that Milton Friedman is the
father of the Earned Income Tax Credit, widely acknowledged to be one of the most
effective poverty alleviation programs in the past forty years. Milton Friedman, Gary
Becker, and F.A. Hayek are among the libertarian thought leaders who have written
supportively of Georgist redistribution schemes.
It is also worth noting that both Oxfam, the venerable progressive NGO, and Joseph
Stiglitz, probably the most left-wing Nobel prize winning economist, both support the
unilateral elimination of trade barriers in the developed world. Thus complaints that
“free trade” will take away job opportunities for the poor in the developed world are
recognized by both as a lesser moral issue than the fact that trade barriers take away job
opportunities from the truly poor in the developing world.
7. Prediction as an Intellectual Standard
There are many on the left who would like to believe that the rise of free market
economics in the past forty years is due simply to funding from right-wing think tanks.
The fact is, free market economics has won largely because it is more effective at
predicting the outcomes of policies than were various flavors of alternative economics.
But rather than argue this, as economists and other social scientists did throughout the
20th century, at this point I’m more interested in encouraging people to put their money
where their mouths are and commit to predictions regarding the future outcomes of
various policies they advocate.
See, for instance,
Michael Strong, “Put Your Money Where Your Theory Is”
3/8/16
21
For a short application of this concept to academia. For the original source of this line of
thought, and a great article, see
Robin Hanson, “Could Gambling Save Science?”
I think Hanson deserves, and may get, a Nobel prize for this article someday.
For an application of this standard to education, see
Michael Strong, “How to Avoid Wasting $60 Billion in K-12 Educational Philanthropy”
In short, if anything here seems “ideological” my retort is “Let’s try to find an empirical
outcome and try to predict what will happen.” Such a process actually improves
dialogue, because it forces people to become very specific about what particular
propositions they believe will have what particular empirical consequences. Often initial
disagreements are considerably smaller once one focuses in on specific empirical
outcomes. And, I contest, once critics of capitalism begin to think more carefully
regarding the actual predicted outcomes of various policy proposals, and are forced to put
their reputations and/or their income on the line, they become far more realistic about
both markets and government.
For another approach, influenced by Hanson, see
Stewart Brand, Long Bets
http://www.longbets.org/
Brand, whom I regard as a hero, is a sensible man of integrity who realizes that bets keep
all of us more honest and more sane.
8. Academic Fallibility
Much of the above addressed various aspects of academic fallibility. But it is worth
adding
Paul Hollander, “Judgments and Misjudgments” the closing chapter of Lee Edwards, The
Collapse of Communism
About mistaken judgments by academics and intellectuals regarding communism.
Although most of us over forty dimly remember intellectuals praising communism, there
is something revoltingly powerful reading a collection of the insanities mumbled by
many of our leading thinkers. As Hollander mordantly points out, the intellectuals’ moral
enthusiasm for Stalin’s Russia was highest at about the same time that Stalin was killing
some 30 million, enthusiasm for Mao’s China was highest at about the same time Mao
was killing 60 million, and passion for third-world communist “wars of liberation”
peaked at about the same time that Pol Pot was killing more than a quarter of his country-
3/8/16
22
man. To juxtapose the intellectual’s lavish praise for these leaders and their regimes with
the actual consequences that were taking place in each nation at the time is stunning.
Those who wish to go more deeply into this might read one of Hollander’s books or
Joshua Muravchik, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism
Muravchik was a red diaper baby, so his account of the egregious failures of judgment
has a poignant quality to it. He tries to be gentle on his parents while simultaneously
being brutally honest. He was chairman of the Young People’s Socialist League from
1968 to 1973.
A conservative classic, that should now become a mainstream classic, is
Whittaker Chambers, Witness
Chambers’ account of his role as a Soviet spy and his accusation of Alger Hiss as a
Soviet spy is amazing. And now we know that it is largely true despite the most vicious
attacks made on Chambers by the elite liberal establishment in defense of one of their
own.
“The Lives of Others” is a splendid German film that deservedly won many awards that
documents the horrors of living under the Stasi, the East Gerrman secret police. Just as
there is a rich literature on WWII and the Nazis, in coming years we’ll see an
increasingly rich literature documenting the horrors of communism.
Jung Chang, Wild Swans, is a beautiful novel documenting three generations of Chinese
women, starting with her grandmother who was given to a general as a concubine when
she was fifteen, with bound feet. But much of the story is that of her mother, who
became a communist to fight injustices such as this but finally discovered that
communism under Mao was even worse than pre-communist China. The story ends with
Jung escaping to the West as a student. She subsequently co-wrote
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Untold Story
That documents his crimes more thoroughly than has ever been done before. It is
noteworthy that Howard Zinn still praises Mao; to a Jung Chang, this is as sane and
humane as praising Hitler and still somehow remaining respectable.
9. History
For me, the relevant histories are the ones that emphasize the role of creativity,
innovation, and entrepreneurship. For instance,
Daniel Boorstin, The Creators
Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers
3/8/16
23
Are not in the least political, but they remind us of the amazing sequence of events
through which our world has been expanded by means of human discovery and ingenuity.
More focused on specifically classical liberal virtues is
Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How
Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything In It
The title is marketing hype forced on him by his American publisher; in Britain the same
book was released simply as “The Scottish Enlightenment.” That said, it is a marvelous
history of the Scottish Enlightenment and the truly extraordinary memes it released. This
book inspired me to include the Scottish Enlightenment alongside Periclean Athens and
Renaissance Italy as the three most creative episodes in Western civilization.
Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830
Provides an extraordinary look at an extraordinary period, the real birth of the industrial
revolution and the modern era. Yes, the steam engine and industrial society was born at
the end of the eighteenth century, but Johnson examines the period during which
technology really transformed society. Industrial society was still small and marginal in
1815 – by 1830 the transition to modernity was moving full speed ahead. A simply
amazing period of creativity and invention.
Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches
Shows the key role that tinkerers played in created the industrial revolution. Often there
is the false notion that scientific discovery made all the difference. While science was
important in the second industrial revolution, in the late 19th century with electricity and
chemistry, the first industrial revolution was largely the work of individual, uneducated
tinkerers.
William McNeill, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
A slightly dated classic, this is still an excellent overview of the social and political
dynamics that resulted in the dynamism of western civilization.
F.A. Hayek, Capitalism and the Historians
Is not history per se, but it includes essays by various economic historians in which they
point out the ways in which historians created a misleading view of capitalism. The most
important example, of course, is that historians perpetuated the belief that under
unfettered capitalism “the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.” In fact, economic
historians have shown that under laissez-faire capitalism in Britain from 1840-1860 the
working class standard of living steadily improved. It turns out there are dozens and
3/8/16
24
dozens of myths that the historians have perpetuated, sometimes through ignorance and
sometimes through animosity towards capitalism.
Thomas DiLorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our
Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present
Is an overly simplistic libertarian revisionist history. That said, DiLorenzo’s book is a
convenient “one stop shop” that corrects many of the mistaken views of U.S. history
written by mainstream historians who are ignorant of economics. Wherever DiLorenzo
seems overly simplistic, take his account with a grain of salt, but then go back to his
sources and discover the rich literature by more thorough scholars that back up most of
his statements, most of the time, remarkably well, albeit with greater nuance. We need a
more sophisticated telling of the story told by DiLorenzo.
Frederick Turner, Shakespeare’s Twenty-First Century Economics: The Morality of Love
and Money
Is literary criticism rather than history per se, but Turner does an excellent job of showing
the vibrant connection between the dynamic openness of Shakespeare’s world view and
the dynamic openness of Elizabethan England, an openness that provided the foundation
for the first wealthy nation on earth in the late 18th century due, in part, to the positive
attitude towards commerce developing among the British. Most cultures around the
world have been instinctively hostile to commerce; British exceptionalism in this respect
is an under-developed theme in understanding “the rise of the west.”
10. 20th Century Libertarian Classics
Most libertarians will be disappointed that I put these at the end rather than at the
beginning. For me, one of my motivations for creating FLOW and doing much of my
writing is because most existing libertarian literature is not very accessible to the average
left-liberal reader. Libertarians already live within their own ethos, already take for
granted too many elements that are only visible on this side of the Gestalt shift. I
certainly learn from many libertarian classics and am grateful to these authors for their
work, and at the same time some of them do have a right-wing crankiness that I find
unnecessary, unappealing, and distracting. The violent political conflicts of the 20th
century distorted everyone’s judgment. Now it is time for us to digest the best of both
sides and get on with it.
Mary Ruwart, Healing Our World
Is a great summary of libertarian thought appealing to left liberal sentiments. She
provides a wonderful introduction to the overall libertarian perspective to the openminded left liberal. That said, there remain traces of traditional libertarian enthusiasms
that I don’t share – guns, for instance – that may unnecessarily alienate left-liberals. That
said, this is the single best introduction to libertarianism for left-liberals.
3/8/16
25
David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer
David Boaz, The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-tse
to Milton Friedman
Boaz, head of the Cato Institute, provides what might be regarded as the “establishment
view” of libertarianism. Much valuable material is available in his anthology, starting
with Lao-tse as the first libertarian.
Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian
Is an excellent personal statement.
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose
Are both well worth reading. Capitalism and Freedom, written in 1960, is more
academic and more dated. Free to Choose, written to go along with the PBS series by
that name, is a brisk summary for the public that came out in 1980 and is thus less dated.
David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom
Is an excellent presentation of anarcho-capitalism by Milton’s son David. Anarchocapitalists believe that the best form of government is strictly voluntary and contractual –
each of us would have the freedom to contract with the legal services and defense
services provider of our choice. A fascinating, if somewhat speculative approach,
Friedman cites medieval Iceland as a place where as system like this actually existed.
F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
More accessible chapters of which were mentioned above (“The Creative Powers of a
Free Civilization” and “Why I Am Not a Conservative”), is a long, hard grind, heavy and
academic, but it does provide an excellent summary of classical liberal principles for
those who are ready to go deep into this world-view.
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Are both a bit over-the-top for my tastes, and yet when one realizes that most of the
world took communism seriously as a superior moral ideal when she wrote these – and
that she had actually lived in communist Russia before escaping – then one can read her
pro-capitalist purple prose more sympathetically. She deserves full credit for reviving the
romance of the creative, innovative, entrepreneur.
Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality
3/8/16
26
Is cranky, as Mises often is, and yet provides a good summary of the absurd views which
prevailed at the time (and are still common today). Mises is to be credited with many of
the ideas that Hayek later improved upon, yet despite Mises’ rightful claim to originality,
he is too dogmatic and cranky for my tastes. That said, I do learn from him and intend to
read a great deal more of him in the future.
Given the climate of world opinion when he articulated his ideas, Mises is without a
doubt one of the most amazingly original and intellectually courageous thinkers of all
time. It is not surprising that he was cranky and dogmatic given the opposition he faced.
In judging Mises, it is worth considering that he was one of the few defenders of
capitalism when John Dewey, arguably the most celebrated intellectual on earth at the
time, was comparing the ethos prevailing in the Soviet Union to “the moving spirit and
force of primitive Christianity,” even as Stalin was killing more people than Hitler and
The New York Times was winning a Pulitzer Prize for Walter Duranty’s outright lies
about the fact. The world had gone insane, and Mises was one of the last sane people on
earth for a period of time in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
[Documentation on the Duranty lies: In 2003 the Ukrainian community attempted to
have Duranty’s Pulitzer revoked but, to their great disappointment, failed.
For a series of articles on the Ukrainian attempt to revoke Duranty’s Pulitzer, see:
http://www.ukrweekly.com/revoke.shtml
For a detailed account of the “Holdomor,” comparable in scale and intentionality to
Hitler’s more famous “Holocaust” against the Jews, see
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/Ukraine_famine.htm
For a seven-minute film short on it see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFeqb0x7q1E
Gareth Jones was a heroic journalist who denounced Duranty, and reported the facts of
Stalin’s deliberate mass starvation of Ukraine, at the time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Jones_%28journalist%29
His work was ingeniously discredited by the Soviets by a subterfuge in the U.S. press and
then he was betrayed travelling companion (who turned out to have been a Soviet agent)
while traveling in Asia and turned over to thugs who murdered him. Jones, and the
Ukrainian Holdomor, should not be forgotten.]
To return to our list of libertarian classics,
Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson
3/8/16
27
Is rightfully a classic, a straightforward exposition of sound economic principles that
should never be forgotten, regardless of one’s political predisposition.
Henry Hazlitt, The Foundations of Morality
Is far less well-known, but remains a classic statement of moral theory that deserves
wider readership among people of all political dispositions. Hazlitt was a journalist
rather than an academic, but he excels at creating coherent, common sense perspectives
that remain useful many years later.
Somewhat dated, but delightful in its enthusiasm for freedom, is
Leonard Read, Anything That’s Peaceful
As is
Rose Wilder Lane, Give Me Liberty
Rose Wilder Lane was one of a trio of women who, along with Isabel Patterson and Ayn
Rand, largely launched the modern libertarian movement. Each published a major
libertarian book in the mid 1940s, one of the darkest periods for classical liberal thought.
Patterson’s book is least readable today, but still interesting.
Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom
Is also worthwhile; raised on the frontier (some believe she co-wrote her mother’s
famous Little House series), she articulates more clearly than anyone else the ethos of
personal responsibility and integrity that form the ethical core of personal behavior in the
classical liberal worldview.
One might also want to begin examining the contemporary journals and newsletters
published by:
The Cato Institute
The Independence Institute
The Fraser Institute
The Pacific Research Institute
Reason Magazine
Reason Foundation
The Mercatus Center
And more; there is vast network of libertarian think tanks, whose work ranges in quality,
but the best are providing cutting-edge intellectual content that is useful across the
political spectrum.
3/8/16
28
Libertarian blogs worth reading include:
Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowan and Alex Taberrok
Café Hayek, Don Boudreaux and Russ Roberts
Econlog, Arnold Kling, Bryan Caplan
The Austrian Economist, Pete Boettke, Chris Coyne, Peter Leeson, Frederic Sautet
The Distributed Republic, a community blog that includes Milton’s grandson, Patri
None of the above are hard-core ideological, they are all more focused on intellectual
economic understandings of the world. Spending time browsing these blogs will
introduce the reader to important perspectives on hundreds of issues that are not yet
adequately represented in the public sphere at large.
Becker/Posner Blog, Gary Becker and Richard Posner
Is interesting, though not quite libertarian. Becker is certainly an advocate of markets, as
is Posner in his way, but they both offend libertarian sensibilities in many ways,
especially Posner.
Finally, Liberty Fund has an excellent “Library of Liberty,”
http://oll.libertyfund.org/
that provides free on-line access to an extraordinary library of classical liberal texts.
Everyone should have read
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
J.S. Mill, On Liberty
But few these days have also read classic works by:
Herbert Spencer
William Graham Sumner
Cobden and Bright
Lord Acton
A. V. Dicey
E. H. Hutt
Edwin Canaan
Frank Knight
Samuel Smiles
Carl Menger
David Hume
Adam Ferguson
To name just a few. Once won has discovered the ongoing importance and relevance of
the classical liberal perspective, it is worth going back to read 18th and 19th century
3/8/16
29
classics with a fresh eye, and to see just how sophisticated and relevant much of their
thought remains today.
3/8/16
30