Walter Block
Biographic Data
| ID | 623212 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Walter Block |
| GIVEN NAMES | Walter |
| FAMILY NAME | Block |
| SIGNATURE | BLOCK W |
| AFFILIATIONS | College of the Holy Cross |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1914 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Rape and Sexual Misconduct at Universities
Sexual harassment is a serious offense with unique characteristics that make the determination of guilt especially difficult. Economist Walter Block asks why, then, on college campuses “is this crucially important task undertaken by university faculty members,” few of whom have any experience in civic and criminal investigation
I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
How we come to own ourselves
It is a puzzle as to how we can own ourselves, given that we consist of nothing but the property of others (our parents for their genetic contribution to us, and our guardians for other necessities of life). Given the people should own the products of their own property, should not our parents own us, to do with us whatever pleased them? The present paper is an attempt to wrestle with this conundrum.
Tragedy of the Partnership: A Critique of Elinor Ostrom
Elinor Ostrom thinks she has discovered a third way apart from private and government property: the commons. In her view, there is no "tragedy" associated with this third option. The present article takes strong issue with her. Our claim is that she has not properly distinguished between a commons and partnership arrangements. In the former case, outsiders cannot be excluded from entry; in the latter, they can. The reason for this confusion betwe…
Deposits, Loans, and Banking: Clarifying the Debate
The relationship between banking deposits and loans is contentious. While the defense of a 100 percent reserve clause to eliminate fractional reserves has commonly been asserted on economic and ethical grounds, Huerta de Soto (2006) arguments are largely ignored. Rozeff (2010) is an example. We show that treating a loan and a deposit interchangeably is impermissible due to both established and a priori legal principles. At best, fractional reserv…
Rejoinder to Davidson on Counterfeiting
Contra Watermelons
Coase and Bertrand on lighthouses
Labor Economics from a Free Market Perspective: Employing the Unemployable
Labor is the most important of the three traditional factors of production (land, labor and capital), accounting for some 75% of the GDP. It is therefore important to focus on issues of labor economics. In this book the approach taken will be that of the free market philosophy of libertarianism, the perspective that allows the maximum of freedom, consistent with the responsibility of all to respect the equal rights of all others. The position of …
A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration
The following sections are included:LibertarianismEmigrationMigrationImmigrationObjectionsAllowing unrestricted immigration is equivalent to allowing the invasion of a foreign armyUnrestricted immigration will create or exacerbate unemploymentUnrestricted immigration will reduce the real wages of the workers already in residenceUnrestricted immigration will increase crimeUnrestricted immigration will promote welfarismLegally unrestricted immigrat…
Cyberslacking, Business Ethics and Managerial Economics
Often, new technology brings in its train unprecedented problems. As far as computers, e-mail and the internet are concerned, this certainly holds true in many arenas. Bur there is one aspect of this new technology which does not present additional difficulties: cyber-slacking. The managerial challenges posed by employees using these amenities for job search, shopping sprees, personal relationships, in a word, general goofing off, have long ago a…
Labor Economics from a Free Market Perspective - Employing the Unemployable: Employing the Unemployable
Labor is the most important of the three traditional factors of production (land, labor and capital), accounting for some 75% of the GDP. It is therefore important to focus on issues of labor economics. In this book the approach taken will be that of the free market philosophy of libertarianism, the perspective that allows the maximum of freedom, consistent with the responsibility of all to respect the equal rights of all others. The position of …
Forget Ocean Front Property, We Want Ocean Real Estate
Economic principles operate in much the same way whether on land or in the oceans. It is the very same tragedy of the commons that almost wiped out the buffalo that is now endangering precious fish stocks. The answer to these challenges, in both cases, is privatization. Establishment of private property will not only solve the problems of the over fishing of the ocean commons, but will also create incentives for investors to use new technologies …
The Division of Labor Under Homogeneity: A Critique of Mises and Rothbard
Even the most passionate defenders of free trade, such as Mises and Rothbard, claim that trade cannot occur under conditions of strict homogeneity of land, labor, and capital. We show that specialization, trade, and the division of labor can emerge even when resources are initially homogenous, due to "natural heterogeneity," economies of scale, and learning
Epstein on alienation: A rejoinder
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to counteract Epstein's views on the alienability of property. Epstein favors limitations of laissez‐faire capitalism regarding such things as guns, liquor, narcotics, certain books and voting and this paper aims to criticize them from the perspective of full, free enterprise. Design/methodology/approach The main method is that of the reductio ad absurdum . For example, Epstein favors prior restraint on books …
Katrina: Private Enterprise, the Dead Hand of the Past, and Weather Socialism; An Analysis in Economic Geography
The market, not the government, is that last best hope for actual and future potential victims of hurricanes. State subsidies have perverted locational settlement decision-making. They have acted in such a manner as to encourage people to build in more dangerous areas than they otherwise would have. By the government undertaking part of the costs of rebuilding in the aftermath of storms, it has encouraged irrational settlement patterns, which hav…
Private parks and walkways under free enterprise: A geographical economic analysis
This paper attempts to answer the question of whether or not government is needed to build walkways near bodies of water such as rivers and lakes, or whether private enterprise can supply such needs. In it we argue that the market is indeed capable of instituting such amenities, despite the fact that there are either none such or at most very precious few in existence at the present time. This occurrence is explained on the grounds that governmen…
Value Freedom, Laissez Faire, Mises, and Rothbard: A Comment on Professor Gunning
Coordination economies, advertising, and search behaviour in retail markets by Kyle Bagwell and Garey Ramey: A comment
Discusses Bagwell and Ramey’s theory that advertising can promote sales even if mostly informative. Posits there must be method in what would perhaps seem to be the madness of customers railing against firms’ lack of communication. Highlights the various slogans employed via jingles, etc. Criticises the analysis by Bagwell and Ramey and shows how their overall explanation fails
The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey
Labour union policies: Gains or pains
States that labour unions are widely respected institutions in modern society. Argues that this reputation in unearned insofar as these organizations are the only ones, besides that Government, which have not only a de facto warrant to initiate violence against innocent people (e.g. scabs) but a de jure one as well (right to strike). Suggests that in a socieity characterized by economic freedom, organized labour as presently constituted would be …
On reparations to blacks for slavery
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
2002). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 282-285
Cyberslacking, Business Ethics and Managerial Economics
Toward a Universal Libertarian Theory of Gun (Weapon) Control: A Spatial and Geographical Analysis
The debate over gun control has taken place in complete isolation from geographical considerations. It focuses on, for the most part, whether legalization would bring about more or fewer accidental deaths, and murders of innocents, than prohibition, and in the USA on the precise meaning of the second amendment to the Constitution. However, these deliberations, argue the authors of the present paper, can be enriched by incorporating into them a sp…
Entropy in the Canadian Economics Profession: Sampling Consensus on the Major Issues
Walter Block, Michael Walker, Entropy in the Canadian Economics Profession: Sampling Consensus on the Major Issues, Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 137-150
Coase and Bertrand on lighthouses
Value Freedom, Laissez Faire, Mises, and Rothbard: A Comment on Professor Gunning
Legalize Drugs Now: An Analysis of the Benefits of Legalized Drugs
The legalization of drugs would prevent our civil liberties from being threatened any further, it would reduce crime rates, reverse the potency effect, improve the quality of life in the inner cities, prevent the spread of disease, save the taxpayer money, and generally benefit both individuals and the community as a whole. Our arguments are based on a basic appreciation of the benefits provided by voluntary exchange and the role markets play in …
Public finance texts cannot justify government taxation: A critique
Rejoinder to Davidson on Counterfeiting
Katrina: Private Enterprise, the Dead Hand of the Past, and Weather Socialism; An Analysis in Economic Geography
The market, not the government, is that last best hope for actual and future potential victims of hurricanes. State subsidies have perverted locational settlement decision-making. They have acted in such a manner as to encourage people to build in more dangerous areas than they otherwise would have. By the government undertaking part of the costs of rebuilding in the aftermath of storms, it has encouraged irrational settlement patterns, which hav…
On reparations to blacks for slavery
Tragedy of the Partnership: A Critique of Elinor Ostrom
Elinor Ostrom thinks she has discovered a third way apart from private and government property: the commons. In her view, there is no "tragedy" associated with this third option. The present article takes strong issue with her. Our claim is that she has not properly distinguished between a commons and partnership arrangements. In the former case, outsiders cannot be excluded from entry; in the latter, they can. The reason for this confusion betwe…
Deposits, Loans, and Banking: Clarifying the Debate
The relationship between banking deposits and loans is contentious. While the defense of a 100 percent reserve clause to eliminate fractional reserves has commonly been asserted on economic and ethical grounds, Huerta de Soto (2006) arguments are largely ignored. Rozeff (2010) is an example. We show that treating a loan and a deposit interchangeably is impermissible due to both established and a priori legal principles. At best, fractional reserv…
Drug Prohibition and Individual Virtue
As far as economics is concerned, the market for drugs, as in all other cases, maximizes the welfare of all who participate in it, at least in the ex ante sense. Legalization—like the repeal of alcohol prohibition—will also help solve drug related problems such as crime, impurities leading to death and child abuse. Nor does it follow from the fact that such substances are addictive and harmful that using them must be coercive, and should be banne…
Procrastination, Obedince, and Public Policy: The Irrelevance of Salience
Modern economics assumes that individuals are rational maximizers, who, in the presence of costly information, sometimes make mistakes. Recently, George Akerlof has challenged this presumption. He proposes that people sometimes fail to maximize their long-run utility, due to the phenomenon of "salience." This refers to the alleged systematic distortion in individual perception where events closer to a person (in time and in space) seem bigger and…
Breaking the Shackles: Deregulating Canadian Industry
Religion, Economics and Social Thought
Masse und Messen
Rent Contol: Myths and Realities
Reaction: The New Combines Investigation Act
On Employment Equity: A Critique of the Abella Royal Commission Report
Using the Abella report on equity in employment as a focus, the arguments in this book essentially constitute an attack on various forms of government intervention in the labour market such as affirmative action programs, pay equity legislation, minimum wage laws, government-sponsored training programs, etc. Apart from some frivolous discussions as to whether Abella did or did not recommend quotas, and whether or not Abella, herself, engaged in s…
Towards Equity
Religion, Economics and Social Thought
Entropy in the Canadian Economics Profession: Sampling Consensus on the Major Issues
Walter Block, Michael Walker, Entropy in the Canadian Economics Profession: Sampling Consensus on the Major Issues, Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de Politiques, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 137-150
On Yeager's ?Why subjectivism
The Review of Austrian Economics: Volume 4
Breaking the Shackles: Deregulating Canadian Industry
Socialist Psychology: Values and Motivations
The thesis of this paper is that the values and motivations underlying socialism are very different, and depend upon the types of socialism under consideration. With regard to what I shall label coercive socialism, e.g., socialism in the sense of which the word is currently used, 1 the antecedents are envy, greed, power lust, ignorance, resentment, and lack of knowledge of even the most elementary aspects of economics. As concerns voluntary socia…
Public finance texts cannot justify government taxation: A critique
Reply to Hill and Rushton
Procrastination, Obedince, and Public Policy: The Irrelevance of Salience
Modern economics assumes that individuals are rational maximizers, who, in the presence of costly information, sometimes make mistakes. Recently, George Akerlof has challenged this presumption. He proposes that people sometimes fail to maximize their long-run utility, due to the phenomenon of "salience." This refers to the alleged systematic distortion in individual perception where events closer to a person (in time and in space) seem bigger and…
Drug Prohibition and Individual Virtue
As far as economics is concerned, the market for drugs, as in all other cases, maximizes the welfare of all who participate in it, at least in the ex ante sense. Legalization—like the repeal of alcohol prohibition—will also help solve drug related problems such as crime, impurities leading to death and child abuse. Nor does it follow from the fact that such substances are addictive and harmful that using them must be coercive, and should be banne…
Series on Mises, Market Process and Socio-Cultural Changes. (Part 1: Introduction
This is the second in a multi-volume series devoted to the work of Ludwig von Mises. (The first was Block, 1992.) In the 'Scope' statement which sets out the philosophical vision of Cultural Dynamics, this journal announces its interest in 'theoretical ... studies that focus on dynamic aspects of socio-cultural phenomena, and (in) dynamic models and theories'. Elaborating upon this theme, the editors of Cultural Dynamics express interest in 'proc…
Compromising the Uncompromisable: The Austrian Golden Mean
Libertarianism is usually seen as an extremist political philosophy, and is rejected by many on that basis. While the Austrian School is correctly perceived as far removed from the mainstream of economics, it is typically interpreted on that ground as outlandish, or even outrageous. It is the the purpose of this paper to show that these two intellectual traditions are much more reasonable than commonly supposed, more so than their respective comp…
Compromising the Uncompromisable: Discrimination
The market system contains fail-safe mechanisms to help those who are subjected to discrimination. A consistent libertarian political philosophy must come out for total repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law either is unnecessary or irrelevant. Efforts to claim that special legal privileges for minorities are reparations for years of enslavement or the equivalent are unconvincing. These "solutions" punish innocent people for the evil doi…
Optimal export policy for a new‐product monopoly: Comment
A comment on Bagwell's proposition that export subsidies are welfare enhancing under certain conditions. Bagwell (1991) seeks to defend the proposition that export subsidies are welfare enhancing under certain conditions. As implied by the title of his paper, he limits his argument to those cases where one, there is a monopoly, and two, a new product is being introduced. Why should this be so? This is because foreign consumers may be unaware of t…
Toward a Universal Libertarian Theory of Gun (Weapon) Control: A Spatial and Geographical Analysis
The debate over gun control has taken place in complete isolation from geographical considerations. It focuses on, for the most part, whether legalization would bring about more or fewer accidental deaths, and murders of innocents, than prohibition, and in the USA on the precise meaning of the second amendment to the Constitution. However, these deliberations, argue the authors of the present paper, can be enriched by incorporating into them a sp…
Legalize Drugs Now: An Analysis of the Benefits of Legalized Drugs
The legalization of drugs would prevent our civil liberties from being threatened any further, it would reduce crime rates, reverse the potency effect, improve the quality of life in the inner cities, prevent the spread of disease, save the taxpayer money, and generally benefit both individuals and the community as a whole. Our arguments are based on a basic appreciation of the benefits provided by voluntary exchange and the role markets play in …
Cyberslacking, Business Ethics and Managerial Economics
Labour union policies: Gains or pains
States that labour unions are widely respected institutions in modern society. Argues that this reputation in unearned insofar as these organizations are the only ones, besides that Government, which have not only a de facto warrant to initiate violence against innocent people (e.g. scabs) but a de jure one as well (right to strike). Suggests that in a socieity characterized by economic freedom, organized labour as presently constituted would be …
On reparations to blacks for slavery
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
2002). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 282-285
Political science (26 works) · Economics (25 works) · Law (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law and economics (16 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Business (12 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (11 works) · Computer Science (9 works)