DISQUS

I followed your link and read the piece. It includes links to various examples of supposedly non-libertarian writing by groups supported by Atlas. Checking two of those links, I found that the text did not support the claims in the piece. In one case the piece gave, in quotes, a word that nowhere appeared in the text it linked to, which is either incompetence or deliberate dishonesty.

I've written a more detailed account as a comment on the classically liberal blog, and will be interested to see if it shows up.

I've measured boot times on in store models of both the linux/flash model and the XP/hd model. The former took about 15-20 seconds, the latter well over a minute. I don't know how much of that is due to linpus booting faster than XP, but I suspect a lot is.

Also, I've seen the claim elsewhere online that what makes the flash disk so slow with XP is the way it is formatted, and that the problem can be largely eliminated by reformatting it appropriately.

Dell also copied the worst feature of the eee--a keyboard with a small right shift key next to an up arrow. Try to shift and you are two lines up in what you were writing.

A number of people in blog discussions raised the question of just how libertarian, in several respects, libertarian paternalism is. I don't know Thaler, but Cass Sunstein is an ex-colleague, so I asked him--both about the freedom to choose of private choice architects and about rolling back current non-libertarian paternalist policies. A summary of his response, written by me then amended by him:

Yes, private choice architects should have freedom of choice. Some, but not necessarily all, current paternalist measures should be rolled back; in particular the book explicitly supports school vouchers and freedom of contract to allow doctors and patients to contract around medical malpractice liability.

My conclusion is that although Cass is not currently a hard core libertarian, his position is libertarian in the weaker sense that adds up to 10-15% of the electorate--he wants less (but not necessarily zero) government compulsion in both economic and social matters than now exists.

Readers interested in my view of the IP question--from the perspective of economics, not moral philosophy--may want to look at two chapters in my _Law's Order_. The first discusses the general question of why it makes sense to treat some things as property and some as commons. The second applies the analysis to patent and copyright.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Laws_Order_draft/...

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Laws_Order_draft/...