This is a scanned copy of Gian-Carlo Rota’s and Kenneth Baclawski’s Introduction to Probability and Random Processes manuscript in its 1979 version.
Employment Contract and Liberal Thought
November 17, 2012 by
This was the first of several papers that focused on the employment contract and inalienable rights, rather than on the labor theory of property.
Introduction to Normative Property Theory
November 16, 2012 by
This was my first (1972) publication in property theory. The normative part of the theory is essentially the same as what I would espouse today, but for the descriptive theory, I was still in the grip of the “fundamental myth” that the rights to the product are part and parcel of some existing property rights to some capital asset.
The Objective Indefiniteness Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
October 31, 2012 by
The purpose of this blog entry is to briefly describe a new interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). A long paper introducing this objective indefiniteness interpretation is available at the Quantum Physics ArXiv and (a more recent version) on my website.
Rethinking Common vs. Private Property
August 14, 2012 by
The purpose of this paper is to suggest a rethinking of the common-versus-private framing of the property rights issue in the Commons Movement. The underlying normative principle we will use is simply the basic juridical principle that people should be legally responsible for the (positive and negative) results of their actions, i.e., that legal or de jure responsibility should be imputed in accordance with de facto responsibility. In the context of property rights, the responsibility principle is the old idea that property should be founded on people getting the (positive or negative) fruits of their labor, which is variously called the labor or natural rights theory of property.
Austrian capital theory and bourgeois paternalism
July 9, 2012 by
As pointed out by Lenore Ealy in her recent blog, there is an interesting connection between a couple of articles in the July 10, 2012 issue of The Freeman. One article by Peter Lewin was a critique of Keynesian stimulus/job creation programs from the viewpoint of Austrian capital theory. The creation of capital and enterprises is a roundabout time-consuming process, and cannot be a quick response to a government stimulus program. The other article by Sandy Ikeda makes a similar point with respect to the bourgeois paternalism of government programs to remake troubled communities since “no government can create what can only emerge spontaneously. That includes genuine communities, warts and all, instead of unsustainable projects and ‘Disneyland neighborhoods.’”
New Instant Cities: The Über-Planners of Libertarianism
July 4, 2012 by
This posting is in the series with the theme of libertarians (or classical liberals in the European sense) being unable to stick to their own fine principles whenever it is ideologically inconvenient (as if the fine principles were not their primary motivation!). An earlier blog posting as well as published papers made the point about the whole anti-social-engineering theme of so much libertarian thought (e.g., Hayek and Austrian economics). That theme was much applied to criticize the social planning of socialism in the transition from a capitalist or pre-capitalist society to some form of socialism. But when real-existing socialism collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, liberal neoclassical economists (e.g., the Harvard wunderkinder such as Sachs, Summers, and Shleifer) pushed the strategy of “shock therapy” which involved massive social engineering in the transition from socialism to some form of a private property market economy. Instead of sticking by their fine anti-social-engineering principles, the libertarians, Hayekians, and Austrians suddenly fell silent since it would be ideologically inconvenient to appear as opposing the (shock therapy) transition to capitalism.
Listen Libertarians! Concluding Part V
June 21, 2012 by
In this fifth and concluding part of the review of John Tomasi’s book Free Market Fairness, we look at the invisible hand mechanism of the property system (in contrast to the usual price system) which seems to be invisible to liberal scholars and social scientists since it does not give a satisfactory “account” of the current economic system based on the renting of human beings.
Listen Libertarians! Part IV
June 19, 2012 by
In this Part IV, we consider the rather fake “inalienable rights” theory of classical liberal/libertarian thought that is consistent with a civilized voluntary slavery contract, a nondemocratic pact of subjection, and a coverture marriage contract, all of which are outlawed in the advanced democracies.