Nothing Natural about It

The sharp historical division between labor and capital ownership is not a natural emergent feature of the market economy but largely the conscious result of government privilege.

Why Left-Libertarianism Matters

Left-libertarianism is motivated in part by indignation over the historical power disparity between workers and owners of capital. Nonleft-libertarians respond that there is no disparity in the free market. Left-libertarians agree. The difference is that nonleft-libertarians often talk about the present capitalist world as though it were the freed market. (This is what Kevin Carson calls "vulgar libertarianism" and Roderick Long calls "Right-conflationism.")

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"I, Pencil" Revisited

Leonard Read’s classic essay, "I, Pencil," which is now 50 years old, is justly celebrated as the best short introduction to the division of labor and undesigned order ever written. Read saw an "extraordinary miracle … [in the] the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding!" His subject and its relation to freedom and prosperity were certainly worth capturing in such a clever, pleasing, and illuminating essay, which is why it is one of the best-known works in the popular free-market literature. But there’s another lesson in "I, Pencil" that has been largely overlooked, perhaps by Read himself. "I, Pencil" is also an excellent primer in the Austrian approach to capital theory. It’s worth looking at Read’s essay in that light.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "I, Pencil" Revisited," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.