BUY MY BOOK OR ELSE!  Roderick T. Long

Archives: April 2006

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One More Atlas Post

Here are Pitt and Jolie looking their most Randian:



Posted April 29th, 2006
Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog04-06.htm#07
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Who Is Brad Pitt?

Follow-up to yesterday’s post: On second look at the TOC report, I notice it says: “The film will be based on a script of the first part of the novel .... It is anticipated ‘Atlas’ will be a multi-part film.”

That’s good news too – it would be nice to see Atlas get the Lord of the Rings treatment. But it does raise a question about Pitt’s alleged casting as Galt in this first film. Galt doesn’t appear in person until the final third of the book; so if Pitt is in the first film, either he’s playing someone other than Galt (Rearden, perhaps?), or else, more likely, they’re changing the story. Oh well.

Posted April 29th, 2006
Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog04-06.htm#06
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Dagny Taggart, Tomb Raider; or, Tyler Durden Shrugged

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

The Atlas Shrugged film project, which has been languishing in development hell for, like, ever, seems to be making progress toward actuality once again, this time under the auspices of Lionsgate. Moreover, the Objectivist Center reports that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are “interested in parts in the film.” Contact Music insists, less cautiously, that the movie will star Jolie and Pitt as Dagny Taggart and John Galt respectively.

I’m inclined to trust the more cautious over the less cautious report, but this casting would certainly be very good news. Not because Jolie and Pitt are ideal to play the roles – they’re not (though on the other hand I can certainly envision Hollywood making much worse choices) – but because their names attached to the picture would bring investor dollars now and viewers later. Keeping my fingers crossed ....

Posted April 28th, 2006
Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog04-06.htm#05
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Anarchy in Prague

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

Tomorrow I leave for the Prague Conference on Political Economy. This won’t be the farthest east I’ve gone in Europe, since Vietri sul Mare, on the west coast of Italy just south of Naples, is actually further east. (One of those things you don’t believe until you look at a map – like the fact that Reno, Nevada, is west of Los Angeles.) But it’ll be the farthest inland I’ve been in Europe, as well as my first visit to a former communist country.

The topic of my presentation is “Rule-following, Praxeology, and Anarchy.” Here’s an abstract:

The aim of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “rule-following paradox” is to diagnose a seductive error that Wittgenstein sees as underlying a variety of different philosophical mistakes: the implicit assumption of the need for and/or possibility of a self-applying rule. A further implication of Wittgenstein’s diagnosis is that human action is not reducible either to purely mentalistic or to purely behavioural phenomena.

If, as I shall argue, Wittgenstein’s analysis is correct, then, I shall further argue, the rule-following paradox has important implications for two aspects of Austrian theory.

First, Wittgenstein’s argument sheds light on the relation between economic theory and economic history – i.e., between the aprioristic method of praxeology and the interpretive method of thymology, as Ludwig von Mises uses those terms in Theory and History. In particular, it shows that, just as thymological interpretation involves praxeological categories, so the possession of praxeological categories involves thymological experience – thus enabling a reconciliation of the superficially opposed insights of Mises’ Kantian approach, Murray Rothbard’s Aristotelean approach, and Don Lavoie’s hermeneutical approach to Austrian methodology.

Second, Wittgenstein’s argument provides a way of defending the stateless legal order advocated by Rothbard, Lavoie, and others. Critics of free-market anarchism often charge that a stateless society lacks, yet needs, a “final arbiter” or “ultimate authority” to resolve conflicts; but what such critics mean by a “final arbiter” turns out to be yet another version of the “self-applying rule” that Wittgenstein has shown is neither needed nor possible.
Adios till next week!

Posted April 18th, 2006
Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog04-06.htm#04
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George Mason’s Feet of Clay

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

We should never let our admiration for a thinker’s virtues blind us to his flaws (or, of course, vice versa). Commenting on past U.S presidents, I recently wrote:

[I]t often seems like the better they are, the worse they are; i.e., when you look at the Presidents who did the most libertarian things, they always seem to be trying their damnedest to cancel out the merits of their pro-liberty achievements by turning around and doing the most horrifically anti-liberty things they can think of. (Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln all come to mind.)
Today’s Mises Daily Article by Norman Van Cott makes a similar point about another founding father with some libertarian credentials, George Mason. When he was good, he was very good; but when he was bad he really wallowed in despicable hypocrisy.

Mason pretended his opposition to the slave trade was based on grounds of justice and humanity, but the fact that he combined opposition to the importation of slaves with support for the strengthening of protections for domestic slaveowners suggests that his motivations were rather more along protectionist lines. As Van Cott writes, “the hypocrisy of the juxtaposed arguments is mind-boggling.” Read the article.

Posted April 17th, 2006
Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog04-06.htm#03
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The Red Flag of Rothbard

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

My Rothbard Memorial Lecture is now available in text, audio, and video formats. In it I try to delineate Rothbard’s legacy for the libertarian left, including a discussion of the relation between free-market anarchism and participatory democracy.

I should add a thank you to Wally Conger, Brad Spangler, and Sheldon Richman for their very generous comments (which I am too vain not to link to).

Posted April 7th, 2006
Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog04-06.htm#02
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JLS 20.1: What Lies Within?
Mutualist Admiration Society, or Mutualist Assured Destruction?


[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I’m back from Vegas, but a bit under the weather; I’ll blog about the conference and other matters later. But while I was away, the latest issue (20.1) of the Journal of Libertarian Studies came out, and as is my wont I’m writing a brief plug.

 A snapshot of Kevin Carson after too long a day at the beach Kevin Carson (check out his website and blog) is one of the most interesting thinkers on the contemporary libertarian left, and his book Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is a fascinating read. While I’m not convinced by two of Carson’s major theses – the impermissibility of absentee landownership and the superiority of (a subjectivised version of) the labour theory of value – his case for them is subtle and sophisticated, and deserves grappling with. Moreover, the book is filled with extremely valuable material – including a trenchant analysis of what Carson calls “vulgar libertarianism,” meaning the error of sliding from a defense of genuine free markets to a defense of present-day neomercantilist corporatism – that one can largely appreciate whether or not one buys into the two aforementioned theses.

Anyway, I figure Carson’s claims deserve a hearing to whatever extent they are right, and deserve a rebuttal to whatever extent they are wrong; accordingly, this symposium issue of the JLS is devoted to examining Carson’s work from an Austrian perspective (or, as it turns out, several Austrian perspectives); it includes critiques by Bob Murphy, Walter Block, George Reisman, and myself, and a reply by Carson. You can read my summary of the contents here; and the articles themselves are already online here.

For some of the discussion this issue is already generating, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Read summaries of previous issues under my editorship here.

Read back issues online here.

Subscribe here.

Posted April 6th, 2006
Permalink: praxeology.net/unblog04-06.htm#01
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