The Constitution of Liberty in the Era of AI

How does anything get built? What are the political precursors to development? Michael Munger has an interesting, and at times persuasive, argument that self-interest combines with particular institutional designs, such as public hearings, to create a prisoner’s dilemma where everyone knows that development is in aggregate desirable but wants that development to be in the… MORE

On a chilly Thursday evening last December, citizens in Dorr, Michigan, a small community about a half-hour south of Grand Rapids, attended a town hall meeting to discuss the possible construction of a data center on the north end of town. Some of the attendees came from families who had lived in Dorr for generations… MORE

Are we living in the new Dark Ages? Despite vast technological advances, our societies are increasingly looking like those that preceded the advent of literacy. So argues journalist James Marriott, who sees in our abandonment of reading a threat to democracy and a reversal of many of the Enlightenment’s gains. He and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts… MORE

Between 1760 and 1860, technological progress, education, and an increasing capital stock transformed England into the workshop of the world. The industrial revolution, as the transformation came to be known, caused a sustained rise in real income per person in England and, as its effects spread, in the rest of the Western world. Historians agree… MORE

In the early 1900s, the philosopher Henry Adams expressed concern about the rapid rate of social change ushered in by new technologies, from the railways to the telegraph and ultimately airplanes. If we transpose Adams’s concerns onto the power of artificial intelligence–a power whose rate of acceleration would have exceeded his wildest dreams–you might feel… MORE

Rather than breaking capitalism… A.G.I… is more likely to create a powerful… ally for capitalism’s most destructive creed: neoliberalism. —Evgeny Morozov. The New York Times1 The New York Times for decades has been America’s bellwether of coming political, ideological, and cultural trends. Even those who rarely agreed with it (Ayn Rand is a prime example)… MORE

The twentieth century witnessed the unparalleled expansion of government power over the lives and livelihoods of individuals. Much of this was the result of two devastating world wars and totalitarian ideologies that directly challenged individual liberty and the free institutions of the open society. Other forms of expansion in the provision of social welfare and… MORE

On April 10, 2013, Liberty Fund and Butler University sponsored a symposium, “Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society.” The evening began with solo presentations by the three participants–Michael Munger of Duke University, Robert Skidelsky of the University of Warwick, and Richard Epstein of New York University. (Travel complications forced the fourth invited participant, James Galbraith… MORE

Svetozar “Steve” Pejovich, one of the most dynamic and insightful theorists writing on property rights, reflects on his experience in economics. With characteristic sagacity and humor, he demonstrates the power that empirical cases can bring to bear on theoretical problems. Born in Belgrade, Pejovich is Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, where he taught for… MORE

John Bates Clark was one of the leading American economists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He made contributions in the areas of utility theory, marginal productivity theory, capital theory, and competition and antitrust. In his later years, he focused on how to end war. Much of Clark’s early work was collected in… MORE

  Karl Marx was communism’s most zealous intellectual advocate. His comprehensive writings on the subject laid the foundation for later political leaders, notably V. I. Lenin and Mao Tse-tung, to impose communism on more than twenty countries. Marx was born in Trier, Prussia (now Germany), in 1818. He studied philosophy at universities in Bonn and… MORE

  Myron Scholes, along with robert merton, was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics “for a new method to determine the value of derivatives.” The particular derivative they studied was stock options (see futures and options markets). A call option gives its owner the right to buy a stock at a particular price, called… MORE