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Book review: The Invisible Hook – The Hidden Economics of Pirates

Peter Leeson’s study of “The Hidden Economics of Pirates”, The Invisible Hook, is theoretically correct, thoroughly grounded in historical research and fun to read. From the jacket: Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss–it’s time to go a-pirating! The Invisible Hook takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pirates. With swashbuckling irreverence and devilish wit, Peter Leeson uncovers the hidden economics behind pirates’ notorious, entertaining, and sometimes downright shocking behavior. Why did pirates fly flags of Skull & [...]

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Book review: Ouch! Ignorance is bliss, except when it hurts…

Once I saw George Selgin referenced on page 7, the paper dollar criticised on page 8 and a Zim$100 trillion note on page 12, I knew I would enjoy Ouch!: Ignorance is Bliss, Except when It Hurts- What You Don’t Know About Money and Why It Matters (More Than You Think). It’s a wonderful read. From the jacket: We live in a world dominated by a system that most of us aren’t aware of, never mind understand. When it comes [...]

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Book review – Heavens on Earth, How to create mass prosperity by J P Floru

In the midst of the row about welfare reform, I finished J P Floru’s excellent new book, Heavens on Earth: How To Create Mass Prosperity. JP surveys the salient history of eight relevant countries: the USA, Germany, the UK, Hong Kong, China, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. In every case, people were lifted out of poverty by wealth creation through free enterprise. Mass prosperity was not created by the equal sharing of misery, by redistributing what others had, but by [...]

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Ayn Rand vs the Whips?

Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal is a collection of fascinating essays, including Alan Greenspan’s famous defence of free banking, Gold and Economic Freedom, which I believe he has never repudiated. Today, I found in it a section of Rand’s critique of the student rebellions of the 1960s which put me in mind of the Whips’ office: If there is any one way to confess one’s own mediocrity, it is the willingness to place one’s work in the absolute power of [...]

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Principles for a Free Society, Dr Nigel Ashford

In just 96 pages, Dr Nigel Ashford’s Principles for a Free Society, commissioned by the Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation, explains 12 of the founding ideas of free societies. These are civil society, democracy, equality, free enterprise, freedom, human rights, justice, peace, private property, the rule of law, spontaneous order and toleration. The excellent Syed Kamall MEP introduced me to the book when we took a large case of copies to Cairo in the run up to their presidential election. Young activists soaked [...]

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Ouch! Ignorance is Bliss, Except when It Hurts – What You Don’t Know About Money and Why It Matters (More Than You Think)

Ouch! — a new book recommended by one of my academic colleagues as widely accessible and very engaging. I understand it “puts most of the books on the crisis churned out by journalists and professionals to shame.” From the jacket: It’s time to wake up or get wiped out. We live in a world dominated by a system that most of us aren’t aware of, never mind understand. When it comes to money and how it really works, most of [...]

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Ending crony capitalism – how markets work

Crony capitalism — businesses capturing the state for commercial advantage, serving politicians and officials instead of the public — ought to be brought to an end. A prerequisite to that is a good understanding of how social cooperation in the market works. Israel Kirzner’s, How Markets Work: Disequilibrium, Entrepreneurship and Discovery (PDF) provides a brief and readable explanation. From the book’s page at the IEA: Human action consists of ‘grappling with an essentially unknown future’, not being confronted with clearly-specified [...]

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Crony capitalism – how big players spoil social cooperation

Again and again, I hear managers ask government for stability. You can’t make plans for capital investment and business without expectations about the future. Government sets up big players in society which not only set expectations through tax and regulation, but which can change their minds, spoiling people’s plans, often at considerable expense. Roger Koppl’s Big Players and the Economic Theory of Expectations makes a study of that theme. Koppl demonstrates, with extensive reference to other scholars, that investment and all other [...]

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Contemporary crony capitalism – Living with Leviathan

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For a contemporary and historical account of the scale of the state and its relations with nominally private business, I recommend David B. Smith’s excellent Living with Leviathan: Public Spending, Taxes and Economic Performance: In the last 90 years the proportion of national income spent by the UK government has increased from around 10 per cent to nearly 50 per cent. This general trend has been followed in most other developed countries, although levels of government spending are much higher in [...]

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How crony capitalism happens – public choice theory

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It’s common for politicians and officials to discuss “market failure” before setting out how the government will correct those failures. However, government fails too and with widespread, profound consequences for us all. Why? Dr Eamonn Butler’s Public Choice – A Primer explains how Public Choice Theory applies the methods of economics to the theory and practice of politics and government to provide important insights into the nature of democratic decision-making. Just as self-interest motivates people’s private commercial choices, it also affects [...]

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Steve Baker is MP for Wycombe. He was previously an RAF officer then a business software consultant. Find out more...

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