Thursday, April 30, 2009

What I am Reading: Inclined to Liberty through Scribd.com

While searching for something else I found this book through Scribd.com. Scribd looks like a great site and the account is free. Apparently, I can read what others have written and uploaded to Scribd.com and anyone can upload their work there as well.


The book is Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit by Louis A. Carabini. Having only read a few chapters I recommend it. My last post in March was titled Capitalism is Dying partly because of the threats to liberty that seem to be so accepted now and partly because all around me I hear the anti-capitalist rhetoric. This book is designed to help all of us to counter the anti-capitalist rhetoric. Again I recomment you read it.


You have options. You might order one from Amazon.com or you might try out Scribd.com. I am embeding the book from them below. I hope it works in the format of this blog, but if not you can click through and go directly to Scribd.com to find it. I have not tried to save the book in a way I can use my pen for markup, but the full screen format is great for reading on my Tablet PC.


I love finding more ways to find books on economics and technology. Try Scribd.com.


Important: Scribd.com clearly states on it's website that it is for works that the uploaders own. A quick search on google shows that there are publishers fighting them as well as publishers that favor them. This book is loaded by the publisher (as best I can tell) and it then is honest to use it in this way. It appears a terrific social website and a great use of Web2.0 technology. Their big contribution is their iPaper technology.




"What really sets Scribd apart is its iPaper
software, which makes online publishing dead simple." -- CNN Money


Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit


Inclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit Ludwig von Mises Institute We are surrounded every day by anti-capitalist clichés. We encounter them in casual conversation constantly among family, friends, and casual talks at the store or church, to say nothing of the media.Famed investor and businessman Louis Carabini, the founder of Monex, has been hearing this all his life. He wrote this book to answer the critics of the free market in a way that they could understand and accept. His overriding theme is that all attacks on capitalism are an attack on liberty and the human spirit. His argument is that these attacks are futile. They backfire and don’t work to achieve socially desirable ends.There are two ideological tendencies: to be inclined toward liberty (letting others live their lives in any peaceful way) or to be inclined toward mastery (permitting others to live only as another sees fit).The topics he deals with include all of the most familiar: income inequality, CEO pay, the need to redistribute wealth, the need for government to create jobs, the limits to growth, the need to tax some particular industry, the need to end inheritance, the problem of materialism and capitalism, the need for more money, the lure of democratic decision making, the problem of luxury, and many other such issues.Carabini has a patience about his prose. He explains the economics. He explains the ethics. He explains the politics. And he always returns to the central theme of the human spirit. Every attack on capitalism masks the desire to rule others through force. It is a great theme in the history of classical liberal writing but Carabini brings it up to date for our times.If you are vexed by anti-capitalists’ attacks all around you, this book provides vast amounts of intellectual ammunition to deal with it. It is also an excellent book to give someone who just can’t seem to understand the merit of economic liberty.112 pages, paperback, 2008.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Capitalism is dying

Rick Waggoner is sacrficed for getting involved with government money. Regardless of how this all turns out the board and CEO at Ford are heroes for refusing government money. I intend to buy Ford.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

What?

From Tyler Cohen at Marginal Revolution -- creative math or how to own undervalued assets at only 3% of the value. What?

Dueling Nobels -- My Money is on Gary Becker

A few years ago, Bill Becker from Indiana Univ. gave a presidential address to the Midwest Economics Association challenging us to teach the controversies and to teach from the work of the Nobel Economic Laureates. His point as I remember it and not necessarily as he intended it was from the controversies come new truths. It is so hard to find the signal in all of the noise.

Paul Krugman, a nobel prize winner, has led from the interventionist side favoring stimulus on top of stimulus. Apparently, Krugman does not feel like markets can or should correct, nor are massive growth in government and deficit moving in the wrong direction. Barro has commented rather negatively as has many others. Nevertheless, the political economic world is currently moving in concert with Krugman's musing with future consequences uncertain.

As I get ready for the secone day here at the Midwest Economics Association meetings in Cleveland, I hear on the TV "Nobel Economist says do nothing" ... It turns out this is Gary Becker, 1992 Nobel Prize Winner, and a personal hero.

Mary Anastiasa O'Grady writes in online.wsj.com that Now is no Time to Give Up on Markets: "What can we do that would be beneficial? [One thing] is lower corporate taxes and businesses taxes and maybe taxes in general. Particularly, you want to lower the tax on capital so you raise the after-tax return to investing and get more investing going on."

"Gary Becker ... is in New York to speak to a special meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society on the global meltdown. He has agreed to sit down to chat with me (O'Grady) on the subject of his lecture. Slumped in a soft chair in a noisy hotel coffee lounge, the 78-year-old University of Chicago professor is relaxed and remarkably humble for a guy who has achieved so much."

I was brought up on Becker. as a Ph. D. student at Ohio State. I could not read enough of his work. I am thrilled to see the words slumped and humble in that opening to O'Grady's interview, because it impresses me with the genuinuness of this remarkable man. A humble economist that speaks the truth of his convictions instead of the pompousness so comoon from those on the political stage.

Dont give up on Markets

Capitalism is under attack in our country and more important with that attack is the attack on our freedom and liberty. Becker reminds us to hold to our believes and to not fall into the just-do-something mentality. Growing government and restricting markets is not the way to create wealth and growth.

Thanks Professor Becker...