Thomas Sowell on Leftism... not the Leftfield album.

Thomas Sowell was interviewed a long time ago, and the video of it somehow found its way onto YouTube.

In the interview Sowell states that very few leftist arguments can stand up three crucial questions about their preferred arrangement for society, whatever the particular flavour of leftism under discussion:

1. Compared to What?
2. At what cost?
3. What hard evidence do you have?

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Private Ownership and the Emergence of Field-based Agriculture

Quick update: There is a nicer, fancier article on this very subject on another blog. If for some reason you read my article below, treat yourself and partake of properal's piece too . ~~~ There is a paper by Samuel Bowles and Jung-Kyoo Choi called 'Coevolution of farming and private property during the early Holocene' and it is wonderful. It leaves a few stones unturned and its thesis needs to be empirically verified or falsified but it really begins to clarify the intimate relationship between the form of agriculture that we refer to as farming on the one hand and private ownership on the other. Their thesis is that technology was not the driver that led to long-term (inter-generational) farming, but also that farming did not follow some moment where the folks in a society all said "hey, let's all have private property now!" Rather, what they posit is that farming and private property actually coalesced, ad-hoc and over a multi-generational time-fram...

I AM AN AUSTRIAN

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Anarchist Writers Disputed - 'Is anarcho-capitalism a form of anarchism?'

Off the top of my head, here are some thoughts about what some archist anarchists think of anarcho-capitalism. This blog post will be divided into sections, with each section consisting of one quote followed by my analysis. Bring a respirator because this stinks to high Heaven. ~~~~~ QA_01 F.6 Is "anarcho"-capitalism against the state? No. Due to its basis in private property, "anarcho"-capitalism implies a class division of society into bosses and workers. Any such division will require a state to maintain it. However, it need not be the same state as exists now. Regarding this point, "anarcho"-capitalism plainly advocates "defence associations" to protect property. For the "anarcho"-capitalist these private companies are not states. For anarchists, they most definitely. As Bakunin put it, the state "is authority, domination, and force, organised by the property-owning and so-called enlightened classes against t...

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