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The Guardian has a very interesting piece by Francis Spufford (from his book Red Plenty) on the now-unimaginable time when the Soviet Union seemed poised to overtake the prosperity of the West. Here’s a bite: Give your imagination permission to engage with some unlikely facts: in the 1950s, the USSR was one of the growth [...]
The distributist elements in Red Toryism got me to thinking whether there are hidden distributist or even egalitarian assumptions behind anarcho-capitalism. A basic consideration in classical political philosophy is the relationship between wealth and power. (See my post below on Douglass Adair for some cogitations on the subject from James Madison’s neoclassical mind.) Power is [...]
Filed under: economics, Philosophy
The best analysis I’ve seen of the clash between Macmillan and Amazon over setting the prices for e-books comes from Paul Carr at TechCrunch. He provides some necessary publishing-industry background: In the UK, way back in 1900, publishers corralled retailers into the Net Book Agreement (NBA); an agreement between British publishers and booksellers that books [...]
One of the media transformations I expect to take place over the next 10 years, if not sooner, is that book publishing will become more blog-like — that is, micropublishing, the interest of the New York houses in putting out blockbusters, and the decline of the industry (and its retail counterpart) generally will lead to [...]
Mother Jones has an essay up by the editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review on the death of the literary journal. I agree with Ted Genoways on this much at least: [T]he less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, [...]
Bob Murphy has a thought-provoking column at Mises.org looking at whether, as deflationists like Mish Shedlock argue, credit should be considered virtually part of the money supply. It’s an important question, since credit expansion over the last 20-odd years has so been massive that a credit contraction will, according to the deflationists, constrict the money [...]
Filed under: economics
I had no idea that the great economic journalist Henry Hazlitt was indeed related to the great essayist William Hazlitt. Turns out, according to this archival Time article about H. Hazlitt succeeding H.L. Mencken as editor of the American Mercury, William was Henry’s great-great-great uncle. I’m grateful to Scott Lahti for bringing this to my [...]
A classic Peter Brimelow article from Forbes on an eminently sensible idea that’s now getting more attention thanks to Ron Paul.
Filed under: economics
Bruce Bartlett tax a look at the latest scam to harness the power of antitax sentiment without actually cutting taxes, the so-called FairTax. Something in general that the not-very-rich, which is most of us, should keep in mind: any revenue-neutral tax reform is going to be a massive tax hike on people like you and [...]
Finished copies of Brian Anderson’s Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents arrived at the ISI Books offices yesterday. It’s a handsome book, if I do say so myself, and while I’m skeptical of any concept that originates with Michael Novak, I’m looking forward to seeing what Anderson has to say. His earlier South Park Conservatives wasn’t [...]
Filed under: Books, Conservatism, economics