Walter E Block
Biographic Data
| ID | 700331 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Walter E Block |
| GIVEN NAMES | Walter E |
| FAMILY NAME | Block |
| SIGNATURE | BLOCK W E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loyola University New Orleans |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2215-4791 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1914 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Economics is beautiful
Economics is beautiful, and all undergraduates who love and revere beauty should major in this dismal science. Beauty is defined, for present purposes as cooperation, coordination, teamwork, togetherness, inclusiveness, and assists in sports. The greater the number of people participating in the “team,” the more gorgeous is the cooperation. The less central direction, whether implicit or explicit, other things equal, the greater is the loveliness…
University Presidents Call for Peace and Thus Perpetuate War
Alan G. Futerman and Walter E. Block conclude that the flood of statements from college presidents calling for peace in the Middle East will, in fact, make peace less likely
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
Rejoinder to Ayres on defense, punishment and gentleness
Ayres maintains that both punishment after the fact of crime, and what the victim is allowed to do during the commission of the crime, should be based upon proportionality. I agree with him on the former contention, but not the latter. This paper is my attempt to make the case that the victim is entitled, based upon libertarian law, to do whatever is necessary to defend himself and his property, provided, only, that he employ the most gentle mean…
Rejoinder to Boonin on Abortion
Tooley on Abortion: A Rejoinder
Response to Lee’s “A Christian Philosopher’s View of Recent Directions in the Abortion Debate”
Rejoinder to Doris Gordon on Abortion
Marquis on Abortion
Comment on Narveson on Friedman on Abortion
What Is Evictionism?
Responses to Three Leading Libertarians: Rothbard, Paul and Rand
Deadlocked; a Reaction to McDonagh and Ford on Abortion
Response to Friedman on Narveson on Abortion
The Austro-Libertarian Point of View: Essays on Austrian Economics and Libertarianism
The Classical Liberal Case for Israel
Evictionism: The compromise solution to the pro-life pro-choice debate controversy
Classical Liberal Case for Israel
Do Black Students Need African American Teachers: Commentary on Prescod-Weinstein
Philosophy of Law: The Supreme Court’s Need for Libertarian Law
Free market for the environment
The tragedy of the commons is responsible for many, if not all, of the environmental problems concerning natural resource preservation that we face in modern society. The tragedy of the commons describes a situation in which resources held “in common”, namely, public resources, are depleted or mistreated by collective action. Basically it means lack of private ownership and almost inevitably leads to a misallocation of resources. And yet, the pre…
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.
Abortion Once Again: A response to Feser, Goodwin, Mosquito, Sadowsky, Vance and Watkins
Only a libertarian would think to base an analysis of the abortion controversy on private property rights. The present paper does just that. On that basis, it concludes that evictionism is the only policy compatible with libertarianism. This essay then uses this analysis to criticize the views on this subject of five scholars associated with this political philosophy: Feser, Goodwin, Mosquito, Sadowsky, Vance and Watkins
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…
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
In Defense of Counterfeiting Illegitimate Money: Rejoinder to Murphy and Machaj
Counterfeiting legitimate money is, and ought to be, a crime, not only under the libertarian law code but under the rules and regulations of all civilized orders. But what about counterfeiting money that is per se illegitimate; that is, is itself counterfeit? Is that a licit human action? The present article argues, somewhat paradoxically, that it is. It offers a counterpart to two authors-Murphy (2006) andMachaj (2007)-who take the opposite poin…
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…
The Economics and Ethics of Hurricane Katrina
How might free enterprise have dealt with Hurricane Katrina and her aftermath. This article probes this question at increasing levels of radicalization, starting with the privatization of several government "services" and ending with the privatization of all of them
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
Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation
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
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
Political science (42 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Law (34 works) · Economics (32 works) · Philosophy (30 works) · Law and economics (26 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Business (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works)