Authenticity in Historical Recreation 25 Aug 2013 | 05:07 am

In a recent thread on an SCA group on Facebook, a number of people discussed modern sources of light that could be disguised as period, including LED "candles" complete with flicker. My contribution w...

The Correlation Between Intellect and Pulchritude 25 Aug 2013 | 03:36 am

I have spent much of my life teaching at reasonably good schools. The students who succeed in getting admitted to such schools tend to be well above average, intellectually speaking (in “intellect” I ...

Debates Old and New 24 Aug 2013 | 11:43 am

Someone recently webbed a debate from more than thirty years ago between me and George Smith on ethics vs economics as a foundation for libertarianism. I enjoyed watching it and thought some readers o...

A Bilateral Hostage via Bitcoin 16 Aug 2013 | 09:32 pm

In "From Imperial China to Cyberspace: Contracting Without the State" I discussed the problem of contracts without court enforcement in the context of past practice in Imperial China and future practi...

Diamonds, Advertising, DeBeers and Sex 14 Aug 2013 | 12:06 am

This morning I participated in a Google hangout organized by the Huffington Post, along with Mike Huemer and some other people. The topic was engagement rings, inspired by a recent blog post on the su...

Faking It 8 Aug 2013 | 03:16 am

The son of friends of ours is required by his teacher to spend twenty minutes a day reading and report on doing so. He is being taught that reading is a chore to be done only under compulsion. Someone...

Creeping Mundanity at Pennsic 5 Aug 2013 | 01:50 am

My Porcfest Talks 4 Aug 2013 | 11:20 am

Recordings of the talks I recently gave at the Free State Project's Porcupine Festival are now up. The Chicago vs Austrian School "Debate" (with Robert Murphy) Legal Systems Very Different From Our ...

The Malthusian Tipping Point 18 Jul 2013 | 01:52 am

Following along on my previous post ...  . Assuming that McCloskey has correctly described the historical evidence, per capita real income was roughly stable at a low level most of the time, over mos...

The Puzzle of the Other Hockey Stick 16 Jul 2013 | 03:24 am

I have been reading Dierdre’ McCloskey’s Bourgeouis Dignity, the second volume of a projected six volume project. Judging by the early chapters, the book contains three central theses: 1.    The grap...