I flew Thursday morning to Guatemala for a major conference of reformers sponsored by the Francisco Marroquin University (it was brilliantly run and very eye-opening) and then on Sunday from Guatemala to Lahore, Pakistan. Got in some hours ago; meetings and lectures today!

My articles on “Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified? The Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects” (Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Summer 1990) and “Intellectual Property: A Non-Posnerian Law and Economics Approach” (Hamline Law Review, Spring 1989). (My views on technology were only mildly prescient with regard to specifics, but right, I think, on the general matter.)

I got back today from Manhattan, where I met up with my good friend and colleague Professor Mohammad Abul Ahrar Ramizpoor, director of the Afghanistan Economic and Legal Studies Organization, for his first visit to the US. We had some very good meetings. He’s off to visit the Acton Institute and the Mackinac Center (with a weekend in Colorado), and then to Washington for more meetings with libertarian think tankers and researchers. I’m leaving in a few hours for Guatemala, to observe the Antigua Forum, which brings together practitioners of classical liberal reforms, then from there to Pakistan (not, unfortunately, a direct flight) for lectures and meetings sponsored by the Economic Freedom Network in Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi, then by car to India to take part in the Freedom Caravan.

Brought to you by the good folks at Libertarianism.org

Paul defends Romney ‘fire’ comment, history at Bain

My opening remarks from the debate at Freedom Fest, Las Vegas, July 8, 2010: http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/FreedomFest-debate-on-the-state1.pdf

I revisited this short article that I encouraged my brother to write, and which was published in The Freeman in 1999: “Another Place, Another War”

February 2, 1969: I step off the back of a CH-34, a helicopter that looks like a flying apartment building complete with side-mounted machine guns. It is so muggy you can’t catch your breath.

As a father, as a citizen, I ask, why indeed?

I’ve not been on this site for quite a while, but should get back to updating it. (Most of my online interaction, besides email, has been on Facebook, which has its advantages, but is limited.)

This question was posed by PolicyMic.com:

“I’m an American underwater in debt and with a stagnant income. Which group should I support: the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street?”

I took one side, Peter Rothberg of The Nation the other. You can see the discussion here.

My talk at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina

An excerpt from my talk to the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Full presentation is available through the preceding link.)

Leonid Nikonov is a contributor to The Morality of Capitalism.

“Can Capitalism Save Poor Countries?”

I just finished Henri Francfort’s quite interesting book The Birth of Civilization in the Near East, from which I picked up some very interesting information and ideas. The discusion of Mesopotamia was quite interesting (including the short description of Urukagina’s attack on predatory behavior by the rulers of Lagash, probably the first libertarian reform movement of recorded history), the discussion of the writing system, etc. Similarly, the treatment of Egyptian civilization was helpful, although I found the following (page numbers from undated edition from Doubleday Anchor Books, New York):

“On one side, Narmer, wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, destroys a chieftain of the northern marches. On the other side, the king, now wearing the crown of Lower Egypt, inspects a number of beheaded enemies. Thus, Narmer is shown as the first ‘Lord of the Two Lands.’” (p. 91)

From a scribal text: “And now the scribe lands on the river bank and is about to register the harvest tax. The janitors carry staves and the Nubians (policemen) rods of palm, and they say, ‘Hand over the corn,’ though there is none. The cultivator is beaten all over, he is bound and thrown into the well, soused, and dipped head downwards. His wife has been bound in his presence, his children are in fetters. His neighbors abandon him and are fled.” (p. 105) (Francfort follows with “If such brutality had been the rule, it is clear that Egyptian society could not have survived,” but he does not suggest it was uncommon, either.)

“The upper register shows the deceased in his function as ‘Scribe of the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands.’ On the left are shown a group of his officials, dressed in white, pencase in hand, busy measuring the grain on the stalk; their attendants (with bare bodies) hold the measuring cord. A peasant (followed by his wife who carries a basked on her head with further gifts) offers something to the tax officials, to propitiate them. But on the right, before the kiosk of the tomb owner and near the mooring-place of the boat, which brought his subordinates to the scene, a peasant, who apparently defaulted, is beaten, while another kneels and prays for grace.” (p. 107)

“If officials abused their power and oppressed the people, the peasants had an effective weapon at their disposal: they fled.” (p. 115)

Interesting. Oddly, here is how Francfort concludes his study of Egypt:

“Whatever aspect of Egyptian society we have scrutinized, we have found Pharaoh at the centre. Yet nothing would be more misleading than to picture the Egyptians in abject submission to their absolute ruler. Their state can be described as ‘a self-directed organism held together by a common regard for their customary rights and obligations.’ [Footnote to F. M. Powicke, The Reformation in England, Oxford, 1941, p. 31] Their polity was not imposed but evolved from immemorial predilections, and was adhered to without protest, for almost three thousand years. Similar predilections have, in fact, maintained the institution of divine kingship among Africans related to the ancient Egyptians down to our own days. It was good, not evil; it gave a sense of security which the Asiatic contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians totally lacked. If a god had consented to guide the nation, society held a pledge that the unaccountable forces of nature would be well disposed and would bring prosperity and peace. Truth, justice, were ‘that by which the gods live,’ an essential element in the established order. Hence Pharaoh’s rule was not tyranny, nor his service slavery.” (pp. 119-120)

I try to be careful not to read back onto such different contexts and civilizations ideas and concepts that are more familiar to me, but may have been foreign to the people of the time, but the beheadings and beatings sound rather like coercion to me, and apparently were perceived as such by the people who tried to avoid them, and not very much like “a common regard for their customary rights and obligations.”

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.

Welcome the Libera Foundation of Finland, founded by Petri Kajander and Gustav Herzen, and the Liberal Institute for Policy Research of Kosovo, founded by Petrit Kelmendi and Dafina Mulaj.