This transcript, or just the excerpt, is well worth a visit.
Articles by Solveig Singleton 
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Hoping to discover Universal Truths, I have been reading Law in Imperial China and The Law of Primitive Man among other things. One never knows when one might stumble across the Law of Nature. But it’s all downhill after Hobbes and Locke. History is quite determined to make a mockery of it all. (This ultimately has bearing on some of the arguments made concerning copyright and patent rules, particularly by my old, old friend Tom Bell (not that Tom is old, just that I’ve known him for ages) and by a younger version of myself, but I don’t make all those connections here).
Be sure to read “Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System” By Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert M. Gaul, Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, December 10, 2006; Page A01.
The dairyman’s final comments are particularly worthwhile, when asked if he was bitter.
Just for fun, a little piece on copyright as socialism.
So how many meta-levels can we think about this at?
-There’s the whole question of the origin of the word “socialist,” I vaguely recollect that, like “liberal,” it used to be used by free marketers.
-There’s the discordance of recognizing that in some country’s mainstream media the term “socialist” is a positive.
-There’s the question of whether anyone who accepts copyright must therefore be a socialist.
-And then the question of whether markets in general, since they seem pretty good at giving people access to things, are “socialist.”
I’ll stop here.
As a single, childless adult I dimly realized some years ago that children’s entertainment had taken a disturbing turn a while back. It had come to incorporate a tremendous amount of “caring and sharing” and safety propaganda, communitarianism distilled into the purest saccharine. Helping and teamwork are well enough, but they are not the only virtues. Indeed, my childless self reasoned, leading the little barbarians to form the expectation that everything was to be shared potentially would lead to disrespect for others’ rights over their stuff. (Some psychology at work: As an only child, I was horrified by the spectacle of other children maltreating my toys).
The Economist recently had an article about the Cato study “The Libertarian Vote.”
In a new study from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, David Boaz and David Kirby argue that libertarians form perhaps the largest block of swing voters. Counting them is hard, since few Americans are familiar with the term “libertarian”. Mr Boaz and Mr Kirby count those who agree that “government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses”, that government, rather than promoting traditional values, “should not favour any particular set of values”, and that “the federal government has too much power”. Using data from Gallup polls, they found that, in 2005, 13% of the voting-age population shared all three views, up from 9% in 2002.
And a book review of Steve Slivinski’s book on the demise of fiscal conservatism…
Knowing I was going to be trapped on an airplane for a considerable time on my way to Asia, I indulged in the 32 CD set from the Teaching Company, “From Yao to Mao, Five Thousand Years of Chinese History.” I’m through the first three thousand years.
From Lake Tahoe a thought: If shrinking the size of government proves a problem, perhaps one can continue to grow the private sector so that the state is comparatively small? One must take care that the state does not grow in ways that make private growth impossible. Beware unfunded entitlements…
And links to my synopses of Carver Mead’s talk, information on optical computing, discussion of talks by Steve Forbes and John Rutledge, and a discussion of distributed computing. Oh, and Peter Huber.
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