My rare but most appreciated readers have probably noticed that most of the sites archives are missing. The brilliant David Veksler is on the case, and said they can be salvaged. Stay tuned…
Addiction archives are missing…
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Author Archives: djdamico
Books I wish I had read before graduate school…
This past weekend was the annual Austrian Scholar’s Conference held in Auburn Alabama at the Mises Institute. It was a great event. I thought I would write a follow up to the brief talk I gave discussing graduate school. My discussion was limited to general suggestions about what types of research to do (economic history) but young students have almost no specific information on how to prepare for graduate school. So here it goes…
Imagine HBO’s next show was Athens
Roderick posted some historical accuracy comments about HBOs Rome. Here’s a similar list I’d expect to have to make if HBO put out an “Athens” or a “Solon”:
1. In real life Solon was a legislator not a lawgiver. Athens had functioning law and justice; Solon just formalized it. In some cases to its functional detriment.
2. In real life everyone hated sycophants. Solon attempted to achieve equality and bring open access to justice to even the poor lower classes of Athens. Rather than only the victim having legitimacy to bring a criminal to trial, after Solon, anyone could. People who brought trials for their own profit were called sycophants and everyone hated them for sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.
3. In real life state sponsored justice did not accomplish class equality. Once the state ruled over the justice system the public prisons swelled with poor Athenians and wealthy elites walked free from crimes as always.
I’m just saying…
Mises on Punishment
Taken from Theory and History by Ludwig von Mises
Part Two: Determinism and Materialism
Chapter 5: Determinism and its Critics
Section 5: Determinism and Penology
Mises explains why state punishment cannot be retributive and is only motivated by deterrence.
Were the Spartans neocons?
Thursday night my roommates and I went to see Frank Miller’s new 300 (a nearly sold out event). I thought it was a lot of fun to watch and had amazing visual effects. CNN news has been running a negative review that complains about the mismatch between futuristic special effects on the one hand and the ancient historical setting on the other. I don’t really care about this matter one way or another. I’d rather comment on one brief historical and cultural point of the film. I am highly skeptical that any society can both raise their male children to be lean mean fighting machines from birth and also place a high value on liberty and freedom as Miller’s Spartans did. My roommates and I came out of the film pointing to the obvious parallel between the Spartans and current neo-cons. Both ride to war and battle for liberty in rhetoric only.
Coolest thing I’ve seen all week
I can’t wait to show this to my intermediate macro class. We’ve been discussing the implications that Keynes’ empirical starting point of depression era unemployment had on his models and policy implications. This may do a good job of easing the transition to our next set of theories. My, how the world changes.
Thanks to Russell Roberts at Cafe Hayek for the link.
Rothbard on Keynes
Friday would have been the 81st birthday for Murray Rothbard. Aside from celebrating, I decided to devote my class lecture (intermediate macro) to Rothbard on Keynes. The first thing I found was Murray’s “Keynes the Man” article. I read this article again trying to decide if it was appropriate to give my class. As fascinated as I was to hear about how Keynes was a member of secret societies with strange moral beliefs, I don’t think my undergrads would’ve gotten much out of it. Then I searched through Rothbard’s Man Economy and State and found the section on “Hording and the Keynesian System.”
Prison labor used for restitution or rent seeking
I got a fascinating and enjoyable delivery in the mail today. Prison Songs volumes 1 and 2 the Allan Lomax Collection. These are recordings from actual inmates between the 1930s and 1970s. The liner notes have historical footnotes, and full interview transcripts. In a word these discs are awesome. 
When and why I still buy CDs
I’ll pay money rather than pirate an album under the following conditions:
1. I happen to be in a record store, see the album in front of me and doubt I’ll be able to find it for download. This happens more often than you’d think. I enjoy music that most people don’t, and the majority of stuff online is more likely to be major pop artists than minor underground.
2. If I want to buy a soundtrack. Soundtracks can be a pain to download and are harder to find than typical artists and solo albums. Not many people realize how much fun listening to music from movie soundtracks can be, so there are fewer people putting them up for download.
3. If I can’t find a bloody download. This happens to me all the time. The people on the net sharing music just don’t get their hands dirty enough looking for really unique underground artists. If you hear of a local band that doesn’t reside in a major city chances are you’re going to have a harder time finding someone willing to share it unless it’s the artist himself (which I have had happen thanks to soulseek).
4. If I’m at the show. I love looking at my albums and knowing that I bought it at a show.
5. If I find it on vinyl. I have no sound preference for vinyl it’s purely an aesthetic thing either you get it or you don’t.
By chance, Tyler Cowen also wrote on this topic recently. I was prompted to write up this list after spending about an hour waiting for installation work at Best Buy. While browsing I noticed a few things about the CD selection had changed recently.
1. They have a lot of classics and oldies (still mostly major acts) remastered and put out on generic release mix discs and greatest hits albums, but not the original albums.
2. Older releases of even current major artists are harder to find than they used to be lots of current artists have the most recent album only. My guess is that if it’s not selling they send back the extra stock and never bother restocking, then just direct people to the web to buy it.
I’m starting to think that hardcore collectors are going to be the only place to find a really wide variety of older music in the future.
Off the Books
Venkatesh’s new book is a fun and interesting read (Cowen’s comments, and Slate’s review). In case you don’t know Venkatesh is the guy who wrote the drugs chapter in Levitt’s Freakonomics. The new book goes further into the urban underground with ethnography. Basically he just moved into the hood, and observed the world around him through the lenses of social science and economics.
What better a lense than Austrian economics? If you’re like me and you believe that Austrians have a unique and powerful ability to explain why things happen the way they do, then this would seem like a great method to link up with Austrian theory. Here are a brief list of research projects I’d love to see performed with a similar Venkatesh, “just do it,” ethnographic approach: