Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Bark louder, little dog.

Consistently wrong since 2002

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Second rate reporter says what?

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Let’s finish the job.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

So many bastards, so little time.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You are here: Home / Politics / Glibertarianism / Who is Baldy Harper?

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    Good lord, what a fail parade…

    I eagerly await how the market receives this and prices a VIP table accordingly.

  3. 3.

    cleek

    Baldy Harper = douchebaggy libertarian economist.

    “Suppose that the master pleads innocence of slaveholding on the ground that he is spending the slave’s earnings for what he considers to be the slave’s own welfare. Would that change the degree of liberty of the slave? Is liberty to be defined in such a way as to allow me to take from you the product of your labor, so long as I claim that I shall use it for your welfare, or for the ‘general welfare’? Should the robbing of banks be allowable under liberty, provided the bank robbers promise to put the proceeds of the robbery to some use they claim to be worthy, or even to some use that a majority of the people have judged to be worthy?”

    taxes are slavery! let’s all beat one out for freedom! fapfapfap!

  4. 4.

    JPL

    A meal with a bunch of dead folks and foreigners…no thank you. I’m a real American.

  8. 8.

    jwb

    I like the way you take leaves around here, DougJ. Just like when John tells us he’s going Galt and then blasts us with ten posts in an hour.

  9. 9.

    max hats

    Related:

    Conservatives on academics are like conservatives on Hollywood celebrities.

    “We don’t care, they’re elitists, not a big deal, irrelevant to real America. . .wait, this one over here agrees with us? GIVE THIS MAN A MICROPHONE, TV SHOW AND BOOK COVER STAT.”

  10. 10.

    Guster

    So is liberty to be defined in such a way as to allow me to take from you the product of your labor, so long as I _don’t_ claim that I shall use it for your welfare, or for the ‘general welfare?’

    Who is this commie?

  11. 11.

    Violet

    Warning! That link is a PDF. Non-PDF link here.

    Holy cow, that is AWFUL. I had the misfortune to hear McMegan on the radio a few weeks ago. I can’t imagine listening to her emcee something. Urgh.

  12. 12.

    Violet

    From the link I posted:

    Honorary Host Committee
    Helen Harper, Larry Harper, Barbara Keith
    Children of IHS founder Baldy Harper

    So he’s the founder. That’s why he gets top billing.

  13. 13.

    Mark S.

    From his wikipedia article:

    At his death, Harper was eulogized by Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), dean of the Austrian School.

    Well, he was eulogized by an idiot.

    I was expecting a little more baldy.

  14. 14.

    mr. whipple

    Warning! That link is a PDF. Non-PDF link

    I’ve always wondered: do pdf’s have cooties or something?

  15. 15.

    jrg

    I love the libertarian “taxes are just like slavery” bit. Hey asshole… Slaves don’t have the option to pack up and move to Somalia. You do. Don’t like taxes? Fine. Get the fuck out.

  17. 17.

    Martin

    I’ve always wondered: do pdf’s have cooties or something?

    You have a Mac? The Mac is exceptional at handling PDFs – so much so that they’re almost ‘invisible’ to the user like PNGs and other standard formats. One of it’s more distinguishing features for me given my job.

    Windows users typically suffer from relying on Adobe’s godawful PDF client that once was fantastic and then morphed into this 17 headed behemoth best suited to rampaging through Japanese cities rather than silently showing you a page of content.

  18. 18.

    kth

    This Institute For Humane Studies, which Baldy Harper founded, seems to be a viper’s nest of evil conservative creeps. Three guesses as to the surname of the chairman of the board, without peeking, and the first two don’t count.

  19. 19.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    Baldy Harper sounds like the name of an ex-con who gets irradiated and ends up as a villain in one of the early Spider-man comics.

    Those old Stan Lee names were great. Maybe Megan can start referring to herself as “Agatha Harkness.”

    Though that would be offensive to poor old Agatha.

  20. 20.

    mr. whipple

    You have a Mac?

    No. Never had a problem with pdf’s, but always see these warnings and wondered why.

  22. 22.

    MonkeyBoy

    So if Megan McArdle plays dogsbody to oligarchs enough does she really expect them to recognize her and give her an expensive house and a generous yearly sinecure?

  24. 24.

    Dr. Loveless

    I had no idea Koch-sucking was so lucrative. At that price, the Baldy Harper had better be the best blowjob ever.

  25. 25.

    JGabriel

    I don’t know if there’s a God or a Satan, but if they exist then: it’s surely a sign that Satan is winning when a group asking Charles fucking Koch for opening remarks at dinner is allowed to call itself the Institute for Humane Studies.

    Poor Orwell. Poor all of us.

    .

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    Doug you were not going to post again for weeks. What happened?

    I mentioned the Emcee, in the last post down.

    Now if only we could come up with an equally sure-fire means of attracting Cole’s attention…

  28. 28.

    Mark S.

    Now if only we could come up with an equally sure-fire means of attracting Cole’s attention.

    Laura Clawson?

  29. 29.

    Mark S.

    Hmm, George Mason University. Is that school very respected? It seems like it houses a helluva lot of right wing nutjobs.

  30. 30.

    Roy G

    Heh, I thought ‘Baldy’ was their nickname for Stephen Harper, and they were going to fete him for his Canadian coup.

  31. 31.

    Judge Crater

    We’re doomed. What kind of culture validates this kind of grotesque materialism and worship of wealth and power? We’ve reached a tipping point and the outcome will be very unpleasant.

  33. 33.

    Nylund

    Windows users typically suffer from relying on Adobe’s godawful PDF client

    That is why I use Foxit Reader to view my PDFs. Super quick and free. But if someone knows of something better, I’m all ears.

  34. 34.

    JGabriel

    Judge Crater:

    We’re doomed. What kind of culture validates this kind of grotesque materialism and worship of wealth and power?

    Well, human culture really. I mean, most monarchies fit that description, and we’ve had monarchies for several millennia.

    Edited to Add: Of course, many monarchs have had some sense of noblesse oblige that required them to rule, to at least some small extent, for the benefit of their subjects. Our oligarchs, on the other hand, seem to rejoice in hurting and impoverishing their subjects (i.e., employees) and fellow citizens to every extent they can imagine.

    .

  35. 35.

    gnomedad

    “Institute for Humane Studies”? Isn’t that rather high-falutin’? Shouldn’t that be the “Heartland Exceptional Liberty Institute” or something?

  36. 36.

    Citizen_X

    Baldy Harper? Wasn’t that Victorian-era Cockney slang for a blow job? “Never mind the in-out then, luv. ‘Ow much fer the old Baldy ‘arper?”

  40. 40.

    Judge Crater

    Well, yes, exactly. But, we believe our Republic had transcended such regressive systems of governance. Have we now just capitulated to the darker nature of the human condition?

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @Anne Laurie:

    Now if only we could come up with an equally sure-fire means of attracting Cole’s attention…

    Be a good looking woman who asks for a pet open thread. I think that’s been demonstrated conclusively.

  45. 45.

    timb

    @MonkeyBoy

    So if Megan McArdle plays dogsbody to oligarchs enough does she really expect them to recognize her and give her an expensive house and a generous yearly sinecure?

    I think she already has it from David Bradley, wingnut oligarch, who somehow provided her a sinecure she did not deserve as “a business and economics” editor

  47. 47.

    Xenos

    George Mason University is heavily funded by the Koch brothers, and according to one source, hosts something like 40 libertarian think-tanks and such.

    Big suprise, really.

  48. 48.

    Brandon

    I’ve just been jumping around Wikipedia reading about all of these morons and it is amazing just how long the Wingnut Welfare circuit has been around. And I think I have found Wingnut Welfare’s patron saint:

    Loren Miller was a civic reformer and libertarian activist in the first half of the 20th century. Perhaps Miller’s most lasting contribution was his success in convincing business magnates to support libertarian causes and organizations. The most notable case was William Volker who, at Miller’s suggestion, founded the William Volker Fund in 1932. Other examples included Jasper Crane of DuPont; B. E. Hutchinson of Chrysler; Henry Weaver of General Electric; Pierre Goodrich, the Indianapolis businessman and creator in 1960 of Liberty Fund; Richard Earhart, founder of the Earhart Foundation; and Harold Luhnow of the Volker Fund.

    They should really have the slogan, “Conservatism: Parting Fools with their Money since 1932”.

  49. 49.

    goblue72

    George Mason U. is a middling PUBLIC university that the Koch Bros. dangled their money bags in front of. The administration, seeing no other financial means available to them to attempt to climb the US News rankings, took the Koch Bros. blood money – said Koch Bros then went on a spending spree hiring on every right-wing economists they could find. By renting the name of a university, they get to stamp their ideological rantings with a veneer of academic respectability.

    Kind of like how David Bradley bought the Atlantic in order to use its historical brand identity to give his neo-con/libertarian sociopathy the veneer of old guard respectability.

    As for McCardle, she’s a whore and she knows it. Its why she gets so harpyish defensive anytime anyone calls her on her crap.

  50. 50.

    Mnemosyne

    Suppose that the master pleads innocence of slaveholding on the ground that he is spending the slave’s earnings for what he considers to be the slave’s own welfare.

    I think Baldy was a little confused about the concept of slavery if he thought that you earned a salary for being a slave that was somehow confiscated by your master before it got to you.

  51. 51.

    Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal

    ya know, if i ever won the supermillions lottery, in addition to worthy causes, and activism i believe in; just for fun, i would love to buy a ton of tickets to one of these type things, and fill the seats with some genuine hell raisers, minimally coached by me, and with a modest plan to disrupt, extemporaneously.

    you know people on the right, who hold these order-of-magnitude overpriced chicken dinners figure the cost, for the purposes of doing just that, keeps the riff-raff out…

    i want to bring riff-raff back.

    sure paying these a-holes off in fundraising might be objectionable to some, but i figure, if the targets are frequent enough, and randomized just a bit, it would scare off more potential donors than i displace.

  52. 52.

    Douglas

    Regarding the PDF question, they can also serve as vector for virii. So there’s some risk in opening a PDF of unknown origin.

  53. 53.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Morbo at #41 — Great article.

    “The idea that supernormal compensation is fit reward for supernormal talent is the ideological superglue of neoliberalism ..” is so true, with the current addition that if one gets supernormal compensation, one must be supernormally talented.

  54. 54.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    #53, bother, I meant, that’s what libertarians believe, not that it is accurate. Note to self, do not post before coffee.

  55. 55.

    PopeRatzy

    Okay, which BJer edited the Wikipedia page for Baldy Harper

    “Dr. Floyd Arthur Harper (February 7, 1905 – April 1973), better known as F. A. Harper or “Baldy” Harper, was an American academic, economist and writer, renowned for his large male breasts. ”

    LMAO!

  56. 56.

    vernon

    @PopeRatzy: That was me! But it would be cool if BJers nationwide kept going back & re-doing it whenever it gets reverted …

  57. 57.

    MarkJ

    Speaking as an economist, this program is proof that conservatives/libertarians know nothing about economics. The sponsor levels are priced in exactly reverse order of the quality of the economist. Adam Smith should clearly be #1, followed by Milton Friedman, who despite being a libertarian crackpot made some real contributions to monetary policy. Hayek had some “unorthodox” things to say, but overall his stuff is pretty irrelevant unless you’re a radical libertarian. I’ve never heard of Baldy.

  58. 58.

    John X.

    @JGabriel

    Monarchies actually have a decent track record for stability. They tend to be corrupt, erratic and dictatorial, but they also have a powerful redeeming feature.

    The ruling family considers their kingdom to be their property. They preserve it from harm out of self-interest, as it is the kingdom that they will pass down to their family.

    Our current crop of oligarchs, on the other hand, have houses all over the world and don’t seem to give a shit whether they break their home countries. It’s self-interest without any leavening sense of ownership.

  59. 59.

    jake the snake

    Our current crop of oligarchs, on the other hand, have houses all over the world and don’t seem to give a shit whether they break their home countries. It’s self-interest without any leavening sense of ownership.

    Noblesse without the oblige.

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