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…

For the last two days I’ve been iced inside my house in Burke Virginia thanks to the snow storms. I put that time to use and have reorganized the categories of this blog as well as posted my publications and working papers on my new website. I am proud to introduce danieljdamico.com. Take a look and let me know what you think.

I just found out that Milton Friedman, one of the world’s greatest economists has passed away at age 94. Friedman is perhaps one of modern history’s most influential people in progressing the ideas of freedom and liberty. His influence will live on for generations to come.

I just got back from the third annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference held at Grove City College. It was a great event again this year and Grove City is a beutiful campus and my appreciation for their academic vision grows each time I visit. Dr. Herbener and Dr. Ritenour really did a wonderful job to make interested students feel welcome and encouraged. They deserve many thanks and gratitude for organizing and running this event. I’m honored to announce that I was awarded first prize in the Richard E. Fox Foundation Paper Contest for my paper entitled, “Incarceration for Private rather than Public Interest: An Economic History of Incarceration in Classical Athens.” Second prize went to Courtney Winther of Grove City College for her paper, “Wage Rate Disparity in the Antebellum South: The Market’s Response for Industrialization,” and third to Nick Curott of San Jose State for “The Rule of Law Versus the Failure of Foreign Aid in Africa.” Finally, I owe Pete Leeson a note of thanks for his helpful advice on structuring my paper through many of its earlier draft.
On the past student scholars conferences see Adam Martin’s Report on 2005 and Dr. Herbener’s report from 2004.

I received my preprints of the book review I wrote for the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy, Volume 1, Number 2 (Winter 2005). The journal will contain a series of articles on the topic of cybercrime by major figures in the anarcho-libertarian field including, Bruce Benson, David Friedman, Pete Leeson, Ed Stringham, Ben Powell, Chris Coyne and an introduction by Pete Boettke. I reviewed The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age by Daniel J. Solove. Here’s a PDF of my review. Download file

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The Mises Blog, which is a must for anyone interested in Austrian Economics and the like ,has a relatively new feature for archiving posts by their author.
Here’s my link:
Dan D’Amico’s posts on The Mises Blog

Last week I attended the Public Choice Outreach Program and this week The Summer Institute each put on by the Center for the Study of Public Choice at George Mason University. Both events have been most rewarding thus far, and I would highly recomend them for students and scholars interested in the ideas of Public Choice.
Of particular interest to the readers of this blog, were two of the first presentations yesterday. The first was an informal discussion between James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. It is an unmatchable experience to observe these two great minds in action. Most interesting was Tullock’s crediting of Mises as his major influence spurring him onto the idea of merging the disciplines of policitical science and economics. Buchanan admitted to having been ignorant of Mises at the time of drafting the bulk of his major theories, but once introduced to works like Human Action it was clear that Mises was the closest thinker to what he had in mind for Public Choice.
The second presentation of major interest to readers of this blog softly supports this link between Mises and Tullock and Buchanan. It was a breif review of Buchanan’s archived material now available on the GMU library website. Notice this letter in particular where Tullock says to Buchanan, “I have had an idea which might be worth thinking about. Why not try to set up a committe on Praxeology (or some similar phrase) in the Soutern Association.”
This post was also posted to the Mises Blog

I’ve grown more and more fond of this phrase as of lately. In accordance with it, my topics of inspiration seem to be broad and far reaching, here are some samples.

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I wanted to expound a bit on one of Dr Boettke’s recent posts which attributed economic calculation as the critical contribution of the Austrian School. In Boettke’s publication on economic calculation he lays out his position in the great homogenization debate which has rifted scholars between allegedly Misesian and Hayekian lines. In addition to the role of economic calculation as a case for homogenizing Mises and Hayek’s contributions on socialist calculation, Dr. Boettke makes an additional point which has gone more unnoticed in the calculation v. knowledge squabbles of the internal Austrian circles. The second case for homogenization that Boettke makes draws on a notion from post-modernism (relax, it’s not without caveat). His point is that to truly understand the message behind an author’s work it is helpful to recognize the context in which he is writing. Boettke says the following succinctly, “Mises wrote to a wider audience and for the ages, Hayek wrote for a particular time and place and to a narrow specialist audience.” Probably more unnoticed is the footnote to this quotations which says the following:

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I edited and posted my comments of Vincent Ostrom’s “The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerabilities of Democracies,” on Amazon.com.
Link to review of Ostrom.
Link to all of my reviews.