David D. Friedman has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is The Machinery of Freedom - Guide to a Radical Capitalism.
The Machinery of Freedom - Guide to a Radical Capitalism
Summary
This audiobook argues for a society organized by voluntary cooperation under institutions of private property and exchange, with little, ultimately no, government. It describes how the most fundamental functions of government might be replaced by private institutions, with services such as protecting individual rights and settling disputes provided by private firms in a competitive market. It goes on to use the tools of economic analysis to attempt to show how such institutions could be expected to work, what sort of legal rules they would generate, and under what circumstances they would or would not be stable. The approach is consequentialist. The claim is that such a society would produce more attractive outcomes, judged by widely shared values, than alternatives, including the current institutions of the US and similar societies. The second edition contained four sections; this third edition adds two more. One explores in greater depth some of the ideas already raised, including discussions of decentralized law enforcement in past legal systems, of rights seen not as a moral or legal category but as a description of human behavior, of a possible threat to the stability of the system not considered in the previous editions, and of ways in which a stateless society might defend itself from aggressive states. The final section introduces a number of new topics, including unschooling, the misuse of externality arguments in contexts such as population or global warming, and the implications of public key encryption and related online technologies. Please note: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©1973, 1978, 1989, 2014 David Director Friedman (P)2019 David Director Friedman
Salamander
Summary
Magister Coelus, the College’s young and brilliant theorist, finally has a student capable of learning theoretical magery at the level at which he can teach it. He invites her to help him with his current research project, which promises to funnel through the hands of one mage more power than any mage has ever had. Ellen, who knows more about both the theory and practice of magic than a first year student should know, refuses, arguing that the Cascade will do more harm than good. When news of the project reaches Prince Kieron, brother and heir of the king and Royal Master of Mages, he insists that it be completed in secret and employed, if at all, only under royal authority. Word has also reached Lord Iolen, Kieron’s competent, cold-blooded, and ambitious nephew, with his own ideas of how and by whom the Cascade should be used. Ellen and Coelus must together face the conflicting threats and demands of two arrogant and powerful men, the peril posed by the very existence of the Cascade, and their feelings for each other. Forty years earlier Olver, a founder of the College, took the first steps in converting magery from a craft to a science. It is for his successors to deal with the consequences.
©2011 David Director Friedman (P)2020 David Director Friedman
Law's Order
Summary
What does economics have to do with law? Suppose legislators propose that armed robbers receive life imprisonment. Editorial pages applaud them for getting tough on crime. Constitutional lawyers raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment. Legal philosophers ponder questions of justness. An economist, on the other hand, observes that making the punishment for armed robbery the same as that for murder encourages muggers to kill their victims. This is the cut-to-the-chase quality that makes economics not only applicable to the interpretation of law, but beneficial to its crafting. Drawing on numerous commonsense examples, in addition to his extensive knowledge of Chicago-school economics, David D. Friedman offers a spirited defense of the economic view of law. He clarifies the relationship between law and economics in clear prose that is friendly to students, lawyers, and lay listeners without sacrificing the intellectual heft of the ideas presented. Friedman is the ideal spokesman for an approach to law that is controversial not because it overturns the conclusions of traditional legal scholars - it can be used to advocate a surprising variety of political positions, including both sides of such contentious issues as capital punishment - but rather because it alters the very nature of their arguments. For example, rather than viewing landlord-tenant law as a matter of favoring landlords over tenants or tenants over landlords, an economic analysis makes clear that a bad law injures both groups in the long run. And unlike traditional legal doctrines, economics offers a unified approach, one that applies the same fundamental ideas to understand and evaluate legal rules in contract, property, crime, tort, and every other category of law, whether in modern day America or other times and places - and systems of non-legal rules, such as social norms, as well. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2000 Princeton University Press (P)2020 David Director Friedman
Future Imperfect
Summary
Future Imperfect describes and discusses technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications, and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work, and play. We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2008 David Director Friedman (P)2020 David Director Friedman