I should come clean

This is that post I was working on that needed it. I had no new ideas today, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it to see if my shame at it's unfinished and inadequate state would inspire anything.

Nope. Not yet.

And the comment about The Probligo, especially, is failing to express what I mean, though I do like him as much as Kolko, which is quite a bit. You see the workings of an honest mind and that is highly praiseworthy.

I usually find it better to just move on and see if I can do a better job of it later. Apologies all around.

I've only read half of Human Action (3rd edition and very little of the Scholar's Edition, which I also own).

I've read very little of Man, Economy and State (because I haven't read all of Human Action). I have read a lot of his essays, however.

I've read only half of Economic Harmonies (though I've read everything I've found that Bastiat himself had published - I bogged down after his erroneous Theory of Value {a version of the Labor Theory, which was, nonetheless and advance on that of his predecessors and contemporaries, including Marx).

I can't read Marx, though I find that I can read some of his latest intellectual descendants. Kolko is particularly engaging, because of his writing style and the fact that his critique of (so-called) capitalist societies is spot on. (As I say, his prescriptions are off because of his prejudices - he can't bring himself to the idea that government should restrict itself to enforcing laws against Force and Fraud, rather than taking over complete management of every aspect of life--as if there were some human or committee of humans capable of perfect control of the rest of us humans.)

I like and dislike The Probligo's posts for the same reasons. The critique is of the Mixed Economy - the Third Way that has dominated the world's political cultures since Keynes.... Well, really, since about the latter part of the 19th century. Say 1870. World leaders still don't understand the import of Marginal Utility Theory which arose about then. Their vision has been obscured by Bismarckian Realpolitik and, in America, the earlier Lincolnian version of it.

I have recently said that I don't take the minutia of politics too seriously, as long as the politicians and their minions leave me alone. Which they've done.