Jeffrey Tucker

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About Jeffrey Tucker
Jeffrey Tucker is founder and president of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Distinguish Senior Fellow of the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, a research fellow of the RMIT Blockchain Study Group, a columnist at Forbes, Chief Liberty Officer and founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, and author of 10 books in 5 languages.
He created the first commercial service of online book distribution that published entirely in the commons (The Laissez Faire Club) and he was an early innovator in online distribution of literature during his tenure as builder and editor of Mises.org from 1996 until 2011, and later directed editorial at fee.org and aier.org. He created the first live classroom in the liberty-oriented ideological space and assembled the official bibliography of famed economic writer Henry Hazlitt, a project that included more than 10,000 entries. Early in his career, following his degree in economics and journalism, he served as research assistant to Ron Paul at his private foundation.
Jeffrey Tucker gave the Franz Čuhel Memorial Lecture at the Prague Conference on Political Economy in 2017, has been a two-time featured guest on John Stossel’s show, interviewed on Glenn Beck’s television show, spoken at Google headquarters, appeared frequently on Huffington Post Live and Russia Today, been the two-time Master of Ceremonies at Libertopia, been featured at FreedomFest and the International Students for Liberty Conference, the featured speaker at Liberty Forum five years, keynoted the Young Americans for Liberty national convention, has spoken at many dozens of colleges and universities in the U.S. and around the world including Harvard University and Boston University, has been quoted in the New York Times and Washington Post, appears regularly in Newsweek and many other popular venues, and is in constant demand as a headline speaker at libertarian, technology, and monetary conferences around the world.
Publishing site: http:brownstone.org
Email: jeffrey.a.tucker@gmail.com
Skype: Jeffrey.A.Tucker
Twitter: JeffreyATucker
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Blog postAn owner of the bar explained to me that he has been closed for a full year and yet miraculously still survives, thanks to vast infusions of government money to cover his rent and upkeep and sustain essential employees. He is looking forward to reopening but is having a hard time finding employees. Many have moved to Florida. Others, he said, “are happy to live off government money rather than work.”
His main puzzle is how it can be true that the government has the resources to s -
Blog postFeeling outgunned, outnumbered, overpowered, smothered, and censored? Many people who oppose Covid lockdowns and all their associated restrictions feel this way. It’s hard not to. You can hardly post on social media without triggering warnings, corrections, and sometimes outright blocks.
Bans are part of the mix too, the complete deplatforming of people merely because they want their freedoms back. It’s creepy. We never thought we would see these days but here we are.
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Blog postA seminal book of essays has been published by the American Institute for Economic Research. It collects a huge range of mighty essays, speeches, and debates from the Cold War period of US history. They were delivered at the Philadelphia Society, an organization founded in 1964 for the purpose of fostering discussion and debate between two factions of what is commonly called the “right” (I do not accept that designation). The title is Conversations on Conservatism, edited by Marcus Witcher, B
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Blog postI just updated my iPhone with a new feature that is long overdue. I’m thrilled to say that anyone who has downloaded the update is now in a position to control what personal information is used and passed on by various applications on the smartphone.
Apple has been generally better than other tech giants about data sharing. This new update takes a major step toward putting consumers back in control. You can manage this feature by going to Settings > Privacy > Tracking. By g -
Blog postIt’s taken much longer than it should have but at last it seems to be happening: the lockdown paradigm is collapsing. The signs are all around us.
The one-time hero of the lockdown, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, has seen his support tank from 71% to 38%, along with ever more demands that he resign. Meanwhile, polls have started to favor Florida governor and lockdown opponent Ron DeSantis for influence over the GOP in the future. This remarkable flip in fortunes is due to the da -
Blog postEarly last year, it became obvious that knowledge about viruses and society – we need urgently to think differently about this subject! – would remain at a premium for a while. It would be difficult to write about terrible policies without some capacity for countering disease panic.
This was because the lockdown lobby relied on argument by intimidation. They know about viruses. You do not. They know about public health. You do not. They have precise and complex models. You do not -
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Blog postIn the early days of the lockdown, Amazon experimented with curating which books they would and would not publish on the crisis. Or call it what it really is, given our times: censorship.
Among the first books hit was AIER’s own Coronavirus and Economic Crisis. The publication was delayed for weeks, then the Kindle edition was stopped for several more weeks. Still, the publication date is now listed as March 28, 2020, meaning that AIER had one of the first, if not the first, book -
Blog post[UPDATE: The paper discussed below was withdrawn from the journal following an editorial investigation. RetractionWatch explains the reasons for this decision. The authors of this article defer to the editors of the journal. We leave the text intact for reference purposes only.]
Last week, YouTube took down an AIER-linked video of a scientific roundtable on Covid held by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The stated reason concerned some passing comments by the scholars that rais -
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Blog postLast year often felt like the “worst of times,” in Dickens’ phrase, but the 20th century saw other terrible times. Following the Great War, political and economic instability in Europe gave rise to totalitarian ideologies that fundamentally threatened civilization itself.
Not everyone saw it coming but one intellectual who did was Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973).
While his friends and colleagues dabbled in various forms of socialist and fascist ideology, and firmly reje -
Blog postGoing to the grocery store in Massachusetts in 2020 guaranteed you would breathe heaps of sanitizer. A full-time employee scrubbed down shopping carts between customers. Conveyor belts at the checkout counter were blasted and wiped between every sale. Glass surfaces were sprayed as often as possible. The plastic keypads on credit machines were not only covered in plastic – why putting plastic on plastic stopped Covid was never clear – but also sprayed between uses.
Employees woul -
Titles By Jeffrey Tucker
Right-collectivism also opposes traditional liberalism. It opposes free trade, freedom of association, free migration, and capitalism understood as a laissez-faire free market. It rallies around nation and state as the organizing principles of the social order—and trends in the direction of favoring one-man rule—but positions itself as opposed to leftism traditionally understood.
We know about certain fascist leaders from the mid-20th century, but not the ideological orientation that led to them or the ideas they left on the table to be picked up generations later. For the most part, and until recently, it seemed to have dropped from history. Meanwhile, the prospects for social democratic ideology are fading, and something else is coming to fill that vacuum. What is it? Where does it come from? Where is it leading?
This book seeks to fill the knowledge gap, to explain what this movement is about and why anyone who genuinely loves and longs for liberty classically understood needs to develop a nose and instinct for spotting the opposite when it comes in an unfamiliar form. We need to learn to recognize the language, the thinkers, the themes, the goals of a political ethos that is properly identified as fascist.
"Jeffrey Tucker in his brilliant book calls right-wing populism what it actually is, namely, fascism, or, in its German form national socialism, nazism. You need Tucker’s book. You need to worry. If you are a real liberal, you need to know where the new national socialism comes from, the better to call it out and shame it back into the shadows. Now."
— Deirdre McCloskey
Whether that means hacking your showerhead, rejecting prohibitionism, searching for large-tank toilets, declining to use government courts, homeschooling, embracing alternative microcultures, watching profreedom movies, baking at home, maintaining manners and standards of dress, publishing without copyright, and just living outside what he calls the "statist quo," we should not lose touch with what freedom means, even in these times.
The essays cover commercial life, digital media, culture, food, literature, religion, music, and a host of other issues — all from the perspective of a Misesian-Rothbardian struggling to get by in a world in which the walls of the state have been closing in. He writes about the glories of commerce, the horrors of jail, the joy of private life, and defends a kind of aristocratic radicalism in times of increasingly restricted choices.
"From federalized showerheads to the libertarian Jetsons, Jeffrey Tucker has written a funny and important book about state meddling, and the possibility of pure freedom. Read Bourbon for Breakfast, and give a copy to everyone you know. It's a smart, subversive, and devastatingly effective case for liberty." – Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Chairman of the Mises Institute and editor of LewRockwell.com
To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI
People tend to look at innovations in isolation. Here is my new e-reader. Here is an app I like. Here is my new mobile device and computer. Even bitcoin is routinely analyzed and explained in terms of its properties as an alternative to national currencies, as if there were no more than that at stake.
But actually there is a historical trajectory at work here, one that we can trace through its logic, implementation, and spread. It’s the same logic that led from the dial phone at the county store, operated by people pulling and plugging in wires, to the wireless smartphone in your pocket that contains the whole store of human knowledge. It’s all about technology in the service of individuation.
Once you understand the driving ethos — voluntarism, creativity, networks, individual initiative — you can see the outlines of a new social structure emerging within our time, an order that defies a century of top-down planning and nation-state restrictionism.
It is coming about not because of political reform. It is not any one person’s creation. It is not happening because a group of elite intellectuals advocated it. The new world is emerging organically, and messily, from the ground up, as an extension of unrelenting creativity and experimentation. In the end, it is emerging out of an anarchist order that no one in particular controls and no one in particular can fully understand.
"The building of universal prosperity is a process that unfolds bit by bit through decentralized decision making and improvements at the margin through trial-and-error. To continue this process, we need understanding, patience, and dreams. Jeffrey Tucker’s book is an excellent guide to all three.” ~ Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, from the introduction.
“In Bitcoin’s brief existence Jeffrey Tucker has become one of its leading proponents. In this book we can see exactly why. Many people think of bitcoin as just money, but Mr. Tucker is able to explain, in a way that is easily understandable by all, the tsunami of innovation that bitcoin is about to release upon the world.” ~ Roger Ver, Bitcoin investor, from the Foreword
Jeffrey Tucker, in It's a Jetsons World, draws detailed attention to both. He points out that the products of digital capitalism are astounding — more outrageously advanced than anything the makers of the Jetsons could even imagine.
Indeed the pace of change is mind-boggling. The world is being reinvented in our lifetimes, every day. Email has only been mainstream for 15 years or so, and young people now regard it as a dated form of communication used only for the most formal of correspondence. And no one uses the telephone unless a call has already been scheduled in advance.
Oddly, hardly anyone seems to care, and even fewer care about the institutional force that makes all this progress possible — the market economy. Instead, we just adjust to the new reality. We even hear of the grave problem of "miracle fatigue" — too much great stuff, too often. Truly, this new world seems to have arrived without much fanfare at all.
And why? We absorb amazing things and don't think much about their source or the system that produces them. We don't appreciate the market.
The Jetsons' world of rapid innovation is our world, but there is one major difference — and it isn't the flying car, which we might already have were it not for the government's promotion of roads and the central plan that manages transportation. It is this: we also live in the midst of a gigantic Leviathan state that seeks to control every aspect of our life down to the smallest detail. This is what keeps getting in our way.
With good, incisive economic sense and an indelible wit, this book will inspire love for free markets — and loathing of government.
To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI
Numa época em que instituições políticas tradicionais se apresentam desgastadas, há grande ansiedade quanto aos rumos futuros do mundo democrático: se apontarão para um aprofundamento da defesa da liberdade, ou se sucumbirão à demagogia dos coletivismos autoritários.
Em meio a essa ansiedade, ouvir Tucker é mais importante do que nunca. Neste livro, analisa a ameaça autoritária dos coletivismos de direita, tão vis quanto os coletivismos de esquerda – sendo ambos nocivos à construção de uma sociedade livre. Como diz o autor, os coletivistas de direita "reclamam do controle da mídia e da academia pela esquerda, mas não têm interesse em permitir o máximo de liberdade pessoal e econômica, e sim em restringir a liberdade em nome da nação, do Estado, dos laços de sangue, terra, trono e altar".
O autor resgata a história do coletivismo de direita e expõe com clareza sua herança racista e eugenista, suas premissas totalitárias, sua pretensão "científica" e dirigista, nos campos social, comportamental e econômico, e assim faz diagnóstico preciso da ameaça à liberdade que o coletivismo de direita representa.
Além do diagnóstico, em Coletivismo de Direita o autor oferece, também, um belo antídoto: longe da armadilha maniqueísta de pensar que se deve combater o coletivismo com um outro coletivismo, Tucker aponta os meios de superação dos coletivismos por meio do respeito – e do amor – à liberdade individual.
Nós estamos cercados por milagres criados no setor privado, particularmente no universo digital, e ainda assim não os apreciamos o bastante. Enquanto isso, o setor público está sistematicamente emperrando o mundo físico de maneiras sorrateiras, com as quais deveríamos nos preocupar.
Jeffrey Tucker, em No Mundo dos Jetsons, destina sua atenção a ambos. Ele nos lembra o quanto os produtos do capitalismo digital são incríveis — a maioria deles melhor que qualquer coisa que os criadores dos Jetson sequer imaginaram.
No entanto, o ritmo da mudança é estonteanto. O mundo está sendo reinventado no nosso tempo de vida, todo dia. E e-mail foi a principal forma de comunicação remota por uns 20 anos, e foi ultrapassado pelos aplicativos de mensagens há apenas cerca de 10 anos. Hoje, é apenas destinado a correspondências mais formais. E ninguém usa o telefone a menos que uma ligação tenha sido agendada previamente.
Estranhamente, dificilmente alguém se importa, e menos gente ainda se importa com a força institucional que torna todo esse progresso possível — the market economy. Em vez disso, nós apenas nos ajustamos à nova realidade. Há até mesmo quem fale de uma "fadiga de milagres"— muita do melhor, o tempo todo. Na verdade, esse novo mundo parece ter chegado sem muito alarde de qualquer forma.
E por que? Nós absorvemos as coisas incríveis e sequer pensamos muito sobre a fonte que as produz. Nós não apreciamos o mercado.
O mundo "jetsoniano" de inovações rápidas é o nosso mundo, mas com uma diferença essencial — e não é pelo carro voador, que já poderia estar por aí se não fosse pela promoção governamental de estradas e pelo planejamento central do transporte. É por isso: nós também vivemos em meio a um estado leviatã que procura controlar cada aspecto da nossa vida até o mínimo detalhe. Isso é o que tem estado no nosso caminho.
Como um bom e incisivo senso econômico e uma sagacidade indelével, esse livo vai inspirar o amor pelos mercados livres — e ojeriza ao governo.
Os objetivos principais deste livro são: 1) chamar a atenção para a realidade que nos cerca, mas que dificilmente nos preocupamos em notar, muito menos de celebrar; 2) exortar a disposição de abraçar este novo mundo como um meio de melhorar nossas vidas independentemente do que as instituições anacrônicas de poder estatal desejem que façamos; 3) elucidar as causas e efeitos que criaram este novo mundo; e 4) estimular mais ainda as boas instituições que criaram esta bela anarquia.
Esta obra cobre os usos das mídias sociais, a obsolescência do Estado-nação, o modo como o governo está destruindo o mundo físico, o papel do comércio na salvação da humanidade, as depredações da política monetária dos governos e o mal da guerra, bem como a mentira da segurança nacional e o papel das sociedades privadas como agentes de libertação. O presente trabalho oferece um prognóstico promissor para um mundo criativo e produtivo sem controle central.
A Bela Anarquia é um livro atual, conciso e anedótico. No entanto, aponta para as grandes ideias e para um quadro mais amplo que ajudam a estruturar os mais importantes debates econômicos e políticos do nosso tempo.
They deal with how you can gain peace of mind and motivation by taking ownership over your own thoughts and feelings, how you can thrive and prosper at work by taking ownership over your own career, and how you can learn and grow by taking ownership over your own life-long education.
This book is about your life and your work: emphasis on “your.”
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As the essays in this book make clear, the freedom philosophy isn’t only a political and economic philosophy. It’s also a life philosophy.
The human spirit thrives under freedom. When we’re free, our incentives line up just right, and our potential is unlocked. Our natural drive to improve our own lives through purpose-driven action is given free rein. Civility, friendship, and abundance are fostered as we engage each other in reciprocal service for mutual benefit.
These happy effects are undone to the extent that we’re unfree. When others restrict or dictate what we do with our persons and property (whether for their own gain or “for our own good”), we are obstructed from fully pursuing our own happiness.
This is true when it comes to compulsory political bonds: drug prohibition, business regulations, health care mandates, etc. But it is also true when we compulsively (even if voluntarily) submit to the wills of others: when give in to conventional wisdom and we let domineering parents, teachers, counselors, bosses, spouses, or friends intimidate us and determine the courses of our lives.
Este libro de Jeffrey Tucker ofrece, a través de breves píldoras cargadas de irreverencia, incorrección política y lucidez, una serie de divertidísimas reflexiones acerca de la creatividad y la empresarialidad como características inherentes al espíritu humano.
El autor norteamericano, con el fin de esgrimir su tesis en favor de una sociedad sin Estado, se apoya en un puñado de películas y de novelas, en invenciones de la tecnología digital, en helados caseros, en célebres marcas de cereales, en videoclips, en tortillas de harina, en máquinas de cortar el césped y en los mismísimos Supersónicos. El resultado es una obra hilarante y libérrima, donde florecen planteamientos éticos, políticos y económicos que el lector encontrará, más allá de sus filias y fobias ideológicas, enriquecedores y dignos de debate.
Pero a los milagros del sector privado les siguen los crímenes del sector público. Tucker no duda en señalar los grandes males de nuestro tiempo, haciéndole un pulso al intervencionismo y sus desmanes, denunciando el afán intolerable de los Estados por legislar nuestras decisiones, actitudes y apetencias. En definitiva, hablamos de una contribución indispensable en la guerra del individualismo contra el estatismo de todos los partidos.
Nota biográfica:
Jeffrey Tucker, originario de Texas, es una de las figuras más relevantes del anarcocapitalismo contemporáneo. Es vicepresidente editorial del Ludwig von Mises Institute y director de Laissez Faire Books.
Cuenta con una importante trayectoria académica, de la que cabe destacar su labor como docente adjunto del Makinac Center for Public Policy. Además, es profesor de la Acton University.
Escritor prolífico incapaz de pasar una semana sin publicar un texto, podemos encontrar sus trabajos en medios como The Wall Street Journal, Journal of Libertarian Studies, The Freeman, Catholic World Report o Chronicles, entre muchos otros. También ha publicado gran cantidad de ensayos cargados de sentido del humor en LemRockwell.com y Mises.org.
Es autor de los libros Milagros del sector público y crímenes del sector privado, Bourbon for Breakfast y A Beautiful Anarchy. Cuenta, asimismo, en su haber, con Henry Hazlitt: Giant For Liberty, una bibliografía anotada de las obras del autor de La economía en una lección (Unión Editorial).
The rising generation faces challenges unlike any that most people alive have seen. This situation requires new adaptive strategies. Jeffrey Tucker’s “Advice for Young, Unemployed Workers” addresses these challenges in concise, compelling ways that are immediately actionable by those who intend to blaze their own trail in life.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Director of Digital Development for the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). He is also Chief Liberty Officer and founder of Liberty.me, the global liberty community with advanced social and publishing features, executive editor of Laissez Faire Books, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is the premier source for understanding the humane values of a free society, and the economic, legal, and ethical principles that make it possible. At FEE, you’ll be connected with people worldwide who share those values and are inspired by the dynamic ideas of free association, free markets, and a diverse civil society.
Explore freedom’s limitless possibilities through seminars, classroom resources, social media, and daily content at FEE.org. Learn how your creativity and initiative can result in a prosperous and flourishing life for yourself and the global community. Whether you are just beginning to explore entrepreneurship, economics, or creating value for others or are mentoring others on their journeys, FEE has everything you need.
FEE is supported by voluntary, tax-deductible contributions from individuals, foundations, and businesses who believe that it is vital to cultivate a deep appreciation in every generation for individual liberty, personal character, and a free economy. Supporters receive a subscription to FEE's flagship magazine, the Freeman, also available at FEE.org.
Consider that most of the technologies that define our lives today — smartphones, email, Internet banking, infinite television and radio, instant knowability of nearly everything, global real-time video communication — didn't even exist just twenty years ago. They weren't even imagined. They are blessings bestowed on us through the combined forces of entrepreneurship, risk taking, enterprising initiative, crowd-sourced cooperation, and the disruptive impulse that seeks to make the world anew. And yet they are far more integral to life than any institution created by politics.
This is humanity speaking and acting, one person at a time. All over the world, people are protesting against their rulers in whatever way is possible. This represents a paradigm shift away from despotism and toward the assertion of individual rights to control our own property and self, forming social and economic associations for ourselves. With state systems failing in every direction, this is the trajectory of history in a world of global communication and trade.
Breaking through the regimentation of the barriers all around us requires political action and intellectual work, to be sure, but it must not stop there. In fact, these might be the least effective paths toward real change. Building a new liberty requires taking the bold step of actually innovating tools to live freer lives. It means creating and embracing new technologies, modes of communication, educational strategies, life paths, and leveraging the new technologies to build bridges out of the status quo and into a better future. This is an essential stage of any giant social change — the stage in which we stop asking leaders to grant us liberty in law but rather take the step of acting on the liberty that is our right.
For too long, people have looked at liberty as something controlled by powerful people to make or take away. We are learning that the future of liberty is something that falls to the hands of those who believe most passionately in it. This is the source of all progress in our time.
There are many muses behind this project and this book. Ludwig von Mises provides the economics, Murray Rothbard the ethical drive, Ayn Rand the motive force, Albert Jay Nock the conviction that life works without government, Garet Garrett the eye for the drama of the marketplace, F.A. Hayek the vision of a self-ordering social order, Leonard Read the perception that individuals can create their own liberty, Rose Wilder Lane the intransigent resistance to all forms of authoritarianism, plus a thousand other leading intellectual lights who have prepared the way for a new generation to make real what others could only dream about.
The time is now to take the idea of human liberty seriously, not only as a political agenda but a life commitment, a value that drives personal ambitions. This is the essential way to make the structures of oppression that have consumed the social order decay as anachronisms and eventually become irrelevant and obsolete. This happens when the institutions we have created serve society more effectively than the decaying apparatus of coercion and compulsion ever did or can do in the future.