Long, long ago when I was an undergrad, I drew cartoons for the Stanford Daily. I came across them recently and decided to scan them.
Here are the few published one and the many unpublished ones, in additional to a few notes and the first piece of fan mail I ever received.
“In our latest edition of Radio Free Market World Report, I talk to Roman Skaskiw about the global secession movement and particularly how this applies to the United States and the European Union. We examine why the world’s wealthiest countries, on a per capita basis, tend to be the smallest states, and why the major exception to this general rule, the United States, managed to avoid the trend.
We discuss whether the United States itself should be saved from secession, why European countries tend to be both socialist and independent, and whether the world will move towards a global government or a global constellation of micro-states.”
(More from Radio Free Market World Report)
Note: This was just posted on mises.org.
It was an honor to read this weekend at The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, alongside Askold Melnychuk, Alexis Buryk and Virlana Tkacz.
I read my unpublished story, “Storyteller,” and a revision of my favorite essay from the NY Times, Homefires series, “Something Worth Fighting For.”
A radio appearance on Radio Free Market:
I speak from 5:00 to 18:00 about my military background and a little about my research in Ukraine.
Michael McKay speaks from 18:30 to 35:00 about the nature of money, including advice for individuals.
There’s a Q & A after 35:00.
This lecture was given at the 2011 Property and Freedom Society Conference.
Powerpoint presentation: here
Essays based on this lecture:
- The Military Mentality
- Bureaucratic Management and Unintended Consequences
Very flattering review of the conference and my lecture here. I agree with Jame’s sentiment. The PFS conference is a rare visit to the outside of the asylum.
I gave this lecture on April 19th, 2011.
Property Rights and Ukrainian Identity:
- In the lecture I make the case against coercive means to support the Ukrainian culture and language. I made two points afterwards which strengthened and elaborated on my case. Firstly, that coercive institution can easily be turned against Ukrainian culture and language. This is already happened through the policies of Ukraine’s Russophile education minister. Secondly, that people interested in supporting the Ukrainian culture and language should do as I do, and voluntarily donate money to cultural organizations. Even more importantly, people should vote with their wallets, and buy embroideries, museum and theater tickets, they should patronize nightclubs which play the type of music they like, and so on — your patronage supports exactly the aspects of Ukrainian culture which you find important.
- I also made a reference to two forces likely supporting the hryvnias peg to the U.S. dollar, but I only mentioned one, the IMF. The second is the power and influence of the country’s biggest oligarchs, who are all exporters. Exporters benefit in the short run from a weakening currency, as I discuss in this essay.
- I misspoke. On the wall hung Taras Shevchenko’s portrait, not photo.
Q & A:
- If my goal was to convince conference attendees that a more libertarian respect for property rights ensures a better future for all, then perhaps I committed a tactical mistake. I should have stuck to the more conventional position of advocating more regional autonomy and local self-governance, but I was asked what system I support. I mentioned privatizing security and with that, we all jumped head first into the deep end of the anarcho-capitalist swimming pool. I did the best I could, working from memory.
- I misspoke at one point, saying Iowa instead of Hawaii. The political scientist who calculated that over 100 million people (172 million, actually) were killed by their own governments during peace time, was the University of Hawaii’s Rudolph Rummel. There is also the KGB admission during Glasnost that 43 million Soviet citizens were killed, another estimate that 60 million Soviet citizens were killed, and Little Black Book of Communism which calculates that over 100 million people were killed by Socialist governments.
