From the Editor, Summer 2009

Welcome to the Summer 2009 issue of TOS.

First up in this edition is my interview with Jonathan Hoenig, who discusses the nature and value of hedge funds, the government’s role in the financial crisis, and how to fight for free markets.

“Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution” by Thomas A. Bowden examines the meaning and consequences of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, showing how and why it has devastated American jurisprudence, and indicating what future jurists must grasp and do in order to begin reversing the damage.

“Energy at the Speed of Thought: The Original Alternative Energy Market” by Alex Epstein surveys the history of the U.S. energy industry, with special emphasis on oil as the lifeblood of the modern world and on freedom as the condition that enabled oilmen to make it flow.

“A Brief History of U.S. Farm Policy and the Need for Free-Market Agriculture” by Monica Hughes shows how the USDA has grown from a small, seemingly innocuous bureau promoting agricultural research to the freedom-curtailing, rights-violating, market-thwarting behemoth that it is today.

“The Is–Ought Gap: Subjectivism’s Technical Retreat,” chapter 2 of my book Loving Life, examines the prevalent claim that moral principles cannot be derived from observable facts, and finds the problem in desperate need of a solution.

The books reviewed in this issue are: Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller (reviewed by Eric Daniels); Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law by Philip K. Howard (reviewed by David Littel); Fooling Some of the People All the Time Updated and Revised: A Long Short Story by David Einhorn (reviewed by Daniel Wahl); The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson (reviewed by Heike Larson); and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (reviewed by Amy Peikoff).

Enjoy the issue and your summer!

—Craig Biddle
Editor and Publisher

About Craig Biddle

Craig is cofounder and editor of The Objective Standard, cofounder and director of education at Objective Standard Institute, and executive director of Prometheus Foundation. He is the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It; Rational Egoism: The Morality for Human Flourishing; and the forthcoming Moral Truths Your Parents, Preachers, and Teachers Don’t Want You to Know. He is currently working on his fourth book, “Thinking in Principles.”

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