http://vimeo.com/13550780
I wasn't sure whether to post this in "Economics Questions" or "Political Theory"; those two subjects are tightly interwoven for me.
"I'm not a fan of Murray Rothbard." -- David D. Friedman
I wouldn't call myself "anti-Enlightenment," but I would defend the above two propositions.
How would you prove that you are not a common man?
Anyone can set up there own descriptive and convienent catagorizations, many of these can have some common overlap with other people in the same culture. It is when someone tries to use this as some normative outside themselves, or an unexplained definition that is absolutley foriegn within the context of the culture, you run into problems.
While I "get" the concept of "the common man" (or the "natural elite)", I will most likely reject most sociological, political, or psycological descriptions of him as anything worth thinking about. "The common man" for me can only exist as data. He is literally a statistic, an average within data on any experiement. Anything outside of that is most probably an ideal and a phantom, a ghost in the machine.
A great talk. Its refreshing to have a path to anarchy form the other side of the economics profession, plus David is cool. What a dynasty. And they keep getting better, these Friedmans