A nice summary of the rise and fall of the Swedish welfare state, “the capitalist welfare state” to the author. The book covers the “golden years” approximately 1870-1970 and discusses how and why Sweden could go from being one of the poorest to one of the richest countries in the West – while supporting an [...]
Unfortunately, this book’s strength is just as advertised: it is old, yet accurate. The story itself could be a lot more enjoyable if the author had not written it in such a heavy and inaccessible language. Don’t get me wrong, the book is not written badly and is also not very hard to read. The [...]
As some of you may know, the “piracy” trial ended with the conviction of the administrators of the web site The Pirate Bay to one year in jail as well as (for Sweden) record-high damages to the entertainment industry. Whereas it is not clear if they have committed a crime – hell, it isn’t even [...]
Peter Klein wrote a blog post yesterday on the Mises Economics blog continuing the agorist vs. anarcho-capitalist discussion on organization. In his post, Klein summarized his contribution to the discussion followed by a quoting Rothbard’s assessment of agorists view on organization. But both Klein and Rothbard make unsupported general conclusions that they seem to base [...]
As a student of economics I am exposed to idiotic statements more or less daily. What is so moronically stupid about these statements is not that they have to do with economics or that they are uttered by stupid people. On the contrary, the problem seems to permeat our postmodern society and most bright people [...]
The increase in mechanisms of government mass surveillance of the peoples of Europe, which is of a magnitude that cannot be exaggerated, is finally causing critical discussion in the blogosphere and elsewhere. In one of the European countries that is so far most affected by this unprecedented power-grab by governments (including super-governments such as the [...]
The common argument for the war on Iraq as well as for the hysteria created by the political elite as well as the media is that it is “either them or us.” Why is this the case? Because they “hate us because we are free.” If this were the case we would indeed be in [...]
When starved people find food they tend to desperately swallow everything and not take time to chew the food properly. We’ve all felt the same thing: when we’re really, really hungry and finally get that so desired meal our heartrates go up, we feel stressed, and we eat as quickly as we can without really [...]
As readers of this blog (or my articles) know, I do not endorse politicians. In fact, I loathe them and hate them for what they are, what they stand for, and what they try to achieve. They are, in the very worst sense of the word, the rulers of the State and the ugly force [...]
Yesterday was Memorial Day, a day for remembering the proud men and women who selflessly risked (and gave) their lives for their great nation. At least, this is the official story of what this day is about. But even though Memorial Day was established by the State only to reinforce the myth of its greatness [...]