I’m in Prishtina, Kosovo, for the Liberal Weekend. Before that I was in Nigeria for the Students and Young Professionals African Liberty Academy (sponsored by AfricanLiberty.org, with IMANI and the Atlas Network) and held at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria before that. (I also gave a lecture/seminar with my friend and colleague Adedayo Thomas at Lagos State University, sponsored by the Lagos State University Students for Liberty and AfricanLiberty.org.) What great and inspiring champions of liberty!

After Kosovo, I’m off to France for the Summer University of the New Economics and then to Sicily for an International Society for Individual Liberty meeting.

In the course of reading to understand better the differences and the dispute between Voltaire and Rousseau, I read a truly wonderful book, The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding. I cannot recommend this book too highly to those who are interested in intellectual history, not merely as the history of books, but as the history of intellects. It’s a great read and very, very rewarding.

The first short introduction of the speaker, Gurcharan Das from India, is in Arabic, but the rest is in English, with Arabic translation. Gurcharan Das is the former CEO of Procter and Gamble India, chairman of the libertarian Centre for Civil Society, and author of the outstanding books India Unbound and The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma. Dr. Nouh El Harmouzi (who introduces him and translates) is director and editor of Minbaralhurriyya.org and author of the just released book Le sous-développement dans le monde arabo-musulman: Quel est le rôle des institutions informelles?

Egypt Will Never Be the Same: What I saw on the streets of Alexandria, by Kareem Amer (Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2011)

(I was involved, with many others, in the four-year Free Kareem campaign. It is good that he is free. I want him to remain so.)

Egypt’s Front Pages, from The Economist

The great lawyer/economist Ronald Coase is cruising into his 101st year. His 100th birthday was a few days ago (December 30, 2010) and he is still at work teaching economics, helping us to understand the world, and spreading gentlemanly good behavior and the spirit of liberty. Recently a number of my Chinese friends took part in a conference in Shanghai (organized by the Fudan University department of economics, which is chaired by the distinguished economist Prof. Li Weisen).

Coase is among the founding parents of “law and economics” and a truly great thinker and scholar. (I had the privilege of meeting him and enjoying his insights at a conference I organized years ago in Aix-en-Provence, where we talked about “intellectual property rights”; the papers presented were published in the Summer 1990 journal of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, including my own paper, “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects,” available here. His comments were insightful and during meals I learned a lot about the history of economic thought, including that his teacher was Arnold Plant, whose teacher was Edwin Canaan, and back in a line of teachers and students to Adam Smith.)

Coase’s essay on “The Nature of the Firm” revolutionized the understanding of institutions by focusing attention on transaction costs in structuring organizations. (It’s nicely summarized by Bob McTeer here: “Ronald Coase: The Nature of the Firm and their Costs.”) In 1960 (23 years later!), he revolutionized economics again with his essay on “The Problem of Social Cost,” which is nothing short of brilliant and has changed completely how serious social scientists consider human interaction. (Terry Anderson of the Property and Environment Research Center sheds some insight on the nature of social cost in “Coase’s 100th Birthday: No More ‘Externalities,’” [hat tip to Don Boudreaux for the link].)

There’s so much sheer ignorance floating around about Coase’s views on the role of property rights in “internalizing ‘externalities’” (sorry, Terry, but I did put “externalities” in double quotation marks), that it’s well worth reading Coase. He doesn’t say what some crackpots say he says, but he does help us to understand institutions, notably property. A short and very clear explanation can be found here.

Wolly Palmer on the Computer

Wolly was the anchor of my life and my best friend. The grief is very, very hard to bear and at times overwhelming. I had so much more to learn from her and would gladly have given half of my remaining life so that we could spend it together. Our cat, Tiggy (Antigone) Palmer, is confused and struggling to understand why Wolly is not here. She goes to Wolly’s bed and paws at it and asks where Wolly is. Tiggy is very loving and knows that I am sad and grief stricken and that something is very wrong, and she is trying to console me. (Tiggy was the latest addition to the family and assumed the role of the Forever-Kitten, as Wolly was the Queen and Matriarch of the family. For Wolly, she and I were partners and we had a cat. For Tiggy, we were a family of cats, and she was the baby.)

I am working on an essay on our friendship that I will post later.

Wolly expressing her love by using my forearm as a pillow during a power nap

Wolly on May 22, 2010, with a new possession, which made a good pillow

Wolly (on her heated bed) and Tiggy (next to her favorite scratching perch and toy) getting ready for bed time

Wolly as a Kitten Who Knew She Was -- Is, and Always Will Be -- Loved

I’m in Berlin (Potsdam, actually) for a conference on dealing with the problems involved in measuring freedom and coming up with some measurement system. Last night I did a television interview in Berlin for John Stossel’s show on Fox Business. It will air Thursday at 8 p.m. and 12 midnight, Saturday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., and Sunday at 10 p.m. (all times eastern).

Over 200 former Cato interns (I think the number was 220) converged on the Cato Institute’s headquarters from all over the country (and some from Latin America, Europe, and Asia) to take part in the first reunion of Cato Institute interns. David Boaz gave an inspiring call to arms Friday evening in Cato’s winter garden, followed by a trek of attendees to a local watering hole to reminisce. Former interns from the 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s were there, and I was there from the “Class of ’78.” I gave the opening remarks at the meeting in the F. A. Hayek Auditorium the next morning (after working until 2:20 am on projects, and getting up at 7:00 to write my remarks; old college habits never die). My remarks follow:

Greetings from the oldest former intern here

Washington Post: “Tyler Cowen’s appetite for ethnic food — and answers about his life”

Tyler is one of the smartest people I know. I’ve known him since he was 15 or 16 and I met him at a Libertarian Scholars Conference, and later traveled up to New Jersey to speak at his high school in opposition to conscription. (His classmates were Daniel Klein and Randall Kroszner.)

One hundred and eleven years ago today F. A. Hayek was born in Vienna. He was a scholar, an activist, an inspiration.

I’m at a seminar in Indianapolis on the economics of sound money; the discussants include very serious economists (and some others, as well!) and a set of readings largely focused on the writings of Ludwig von Mises, especially Human Action. I’d not read the book for many years and was struck by how original and intelligent it is (as well as occasionally repetitive and a wee bit harsh on his critics, but those are minor flaws in a serious book). It’s been a joy to read as I snatched time between meetings in Kyrgyzstan (and it helped me to fill the many flights and hours to get there and back — it’s a big book). It was in my satchel during my presentations on the model of economic reform in the Republic of Georgia at the Kyrgyz Ministry of Economic Development, at the invitation of acting minister Emil Umetaliev, a founding board member of the Central Asian Free Market Institute. I think that Mises might have been pleased.**

The conference on sound money is organized by the Liberty Fund, which is the publisher of Mises’s books. They are commemorating their fiftieth anniversary by “re-running” a number of their old seminars, including one that was held on these readings (plus or minus a few) in 1974. (At the University of Southern California in 1973-1974 we had a reading group that read Mises. I recall our meeting on October 10, 1973, at which the wonderful teacher and philosopher Prof. John Hospers was present, when we learned about the death that day of Mises; a great mind left the scene that day, but through his works he continues to be active and to enlighten and inspire us.)

**By the way, there’s an interesting, critical discussion of the reform process in Georgia, focusing on the contributions of fellow Mises fan Kakha Bendukidze, here; I organized some of the conferences in Tbilisi that are discussed in the papers.

Exiled Iranian Journalist Awarded $500,000 Milton Friedman Liberty Prize

New York Times: “Putin Visits Venezuela to Discuss Oil and Arms”

Mr. Putin’s one-day visit built on a relationship rooted in billions of dollars of Russian arms sales to Venezuela over the past decade. Venezuela has also emerged as one of Russia’s most vocal supporters, recognizing two Russian-backed separatist enclaves of Georgia in 2009 and applauding Russian efforts to advance the ambitions of an embryonic group of gas-rich nations.

New York Times: “Criticism of Chávez Stifled by Arrests”

When Judge María Lourdes Afiuni issued a ruling in December that irked President Hugo Chávez, he did little to contain his outrage. The president, contending on national television that she would have been put before a firing squad in earlier times, sent his secret intelligence police to arrest her.

My appreciation of Hayek on the occasion of his 100th Birthday (May 8, 1999): “F. A. Hayek: Prophet of the Modern World”

I recall being at a birthday party for the great man in Vienna at the Handelskammer in, I think, 1988 or 1989, when Karl Milford, the grandson of the Austrian-Marxist Rudolf Hilferding, spoke. It was at that party that I met a wonderful Czech libertarian, Miroslav Sevcik, with whom I worked to promote liberty in Czechoslovakia when I was promoting liberty in the Soviet Bloc nations.

Charles G. Koch on the “Science of Success”

“The Challenge Process”

Three Women Who Launched a Movement

The Sunday “Credo” interview in today’s Washington Examiner: “Credo: Tom Palmer”

At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that the individual human life matters. I believe that human freedom is a constituent element of a good life — of human happiness — and is, consequently, intrinsically valuable.

(Since I’m reading rather carefully Ian Carter’s excellent A Measure of Freedom, I might have substituted for “intrinsically valuable” the term “non-specifically and constitutively valuable,” but that would probably not have conveyed my point any more clearly.)

Michael Moynihan of Reason has been doing some super sleuthing. He wants to know, “Just what makes something humorous?” And now he has the answer: Jonathan Chait, to whom he has awarded the prestigious title of “The Left’s Own Topo Gigo.” If you’re not chortling and guffawing over Chait’s John McCain hand puppet telling the Sarah Palin hand puppet that he picked her as his running mate because “I was a sad, desperate old man trapped in a loveless marriage — I saw you and I saw a second chance,” then you must be like me: stupid and humorless, in the words of Matthew Yglesias, one of the smartest and funniest guys around. So smart and so funny he told my friend Veronique de Rugy to SHUT UP! about tax policy because she’s …. get this!!! … FRENCH. Ha ha! FRENCH!!!! Oh, how we laughed!

But you know, when you keep on having to say, “But I’m funny. Really!,” you ought to wonder whether maybe you’re….well, you’re just not. That you’re crude and boorish and that you really ought to apologize to the person you mocked because of her name and nationality. Or at least that your “humor” is not really suitable for grown-up conversation. (And yes, I do know that they were trying for some sort of “irony,” but they failed utterly [for one thing, saying racism is "unAmerican" and saying Jews and Catholics are "unAmerican" really are different uses of the term].) Moreover, undeniably hidden behind the protestations of humor was a very clear message to someone who disagreed about what the essence of America is [hint: not using the power to tax maliciously to punish people], and that message is:

SHUT THE HELL UP AND GET OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!

Thanks, Jonathan and Matthew, for raising the tone of policy discourse so. You’re great guys. Class acts. Really.

A nicely done video on the enduring legacy of Ayn Rand. I’m not a follower (I’m more eclectic in my views), but I find much to admire in her work, including the insight regarding the morality of socialism: it’s not the case that people are not good enough for socialism; socialism is not good enough for people. It’s rather promising that her works continue to sell so briskly and that “Ayn Rand Is In.” (I try to expand on some of her insights in Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, especially in the chapters on moral philosophy. The long chapter on Rawls moral theory deals with the moral implications of a right to withdraw, a right that is at the core of Atlas Shrugged. It was a major part of my dissertation at Oxford on “A Cosmopolitan Theory of Justice.”)