Monthly Archives: July 2010

My brother is an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, and he’s recently launched a neat new tool called Envolve, which offers in-browser chatting capabilities for any website. I’ve installed it here on the blog, and will be online for the next … Continue reading →

Nick Schulz weighs in on the liberaltarianism debate: The original fusionist project of Frank Meyer and others was predicated on a belief that libertarians and conservatives (social/religious/paleo) actually agreed on some basic philosophical principles, not just shared goals such as … Continue reading →

Jane Jacobs’s final criterion for successful urban neighborhoods was the existence of aged buildings: If you look about, you will see that only operations that are well established, high-turnover, standardized, or heavily subsidized can afford, commonly, to carry the costs … Continue reading →

As I’ve re-read Great American Cities this summer, I’ve found that the examples in the book are clearer now that I’ve spent a few months each in Philadelphia and New York, two of the cities Jacobs uses for many of … Continue reading →

Ilya Somin has another thoughtful post about the prospects for a liberaltarian movement: The range of issues where libertarians and liberals genuinely agree is narrower than Lee assumes. Most liberals do not in fact agree with libertarians on civil liberties, … Continue reading →

I try to avoid criticizing my commenters, but this anonymous comment so perfectly crystalizes the attitude I was criticizing in my last point that I can’t resist quoting it: For all the gassing on conservatives do about ‘family values’ and … Continue reading →

Over at Reason, there’s a debate about the future of libertarianism. Brink Lindsey argues that the American right has become increasingly inhospitable to libertarian ideas, and that it’s time for the dissolution of the historic “fusionist” alliance between conservatives and … Continue reading →

When I moved to the St. Louis area in 2005, I rented a townhouse in the inner-ring suburb of Richmond Heights. It was a quiet, safe, and pleasant neighborhood, but rather dull. The neighborhood was entirely residential and abutted a … Continue reading →

It’s not uncommon in economic policy debates to hear people rending their garments over the supposed decline of America’s “manufacturing base.” There has never been much factual basis for these concerns; our manufacturing output has been steadily rising for decades. … Continue reading →

Back in March, I listed the books that influenced me and commented that Jane Jacobs was the only one to have a significant impact on my everyday life. Jacobs was a profoundly important bottom-up thinker, and so I’m going to … Continue reading →