Against Politics

Toward a depoliticized society

A conversation with Anthony de Jasay

Karl Popper’s authoritarian social technologies

Karl Popper is known for his influential contributions to the philosophy of science and critical rationalism.  Unfortunately, his attempt to apply critical rationalism to political philosophy produced writings of a more impatient and dubious nature. For example, in 1960 Popper wrote: ..the empiricist’s questions ‘How do you know? What is the source of your assertion?’ [...]

Barack Obama versus Michael Bakunin

There are great expectations about the ability of academics to shape society by “smart” policies. The anarchist Michael Bakunin had not much useful to say about economics but he was a realistic observer of intellectuals and power: Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with legislation [...]

The consequentialist consensus

Don Boudreaux writes: It’s no ethical challenge to support something that works.  It is, however, a real ethical challenge to oppose something that you believe would work.  Someone opposed as a matter of principle to government intervention into the economy might be sensible or not; but if that person sticks by his or her principles [...]

Pavlov’s dogs of stimulus

In his latest column “To Spend or Not to Spend,” Anthony de Jasay discusses the current plans to borrow and spend our way out of economic recession. A central place in such policy proposals is taken by the renewed enthusiasm for Keynesian economics, a school of economic thinking that appears to have been formulated for [...]

Taking Paul Krugman seriously

Robert Higgs on Paul Krugman Krugman obviously subscribes to the belief, immensely popular inside the beltway, that all the money rightfully belongs to the government, whether it is being considered for involuntary transfer from its private holders to the government or being considered for retention by the people who earned it in the first place. [...]

Game theoreticians weigh in on financial crisis

In November 2008 the Nobel laureate economist Robert Aumann spoke at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies and expressed concern about the faulty proposals to solve the financial crisis. His talk is now available on YouTube: In October 2008, another game theoretician and Nobel Prize winner, John Nash Jr. weighed in on the financial crisis [...]

The presumption of liberty

Perhaps no political philosopher has done as much painstaking work to review the legitimacy and need for political authority as Anthony de Jasay.  What makes de Jasay’s work stand out is his ability to engage with the technical arguments of political economists and philosophers without sacrificing common sense. For example, de Jasay understands the complications [...]

Social contract, free ride

The publisher Liberty Fund has republished Anthony de Jasay’s book “Social Contract, Free Ride: A Study of the Public Goods Problem.” In this book, de Jasay, one of the most original and sharpest political philosophers of our age, offers a critical review of the public goods argument for the state. He argues that a) economists [...]

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