David D. Friedman's Home Page

This is the home page of David Friedman. Not the Hawaiian artist David Friedman, or the composer David Friedman, or the fix-what's-wrong-with- government David Friedman (050) or the fifteen year old David Friedman or the eighteen year old David Friedman or the legendary film pornographer David Friedman or even the economic journalist David Friedman but the anarchist-anachronist-economist David Friedman.

Now you know why I included my middle initial.

This page has links to my work in a variety of areas, published and unpublished. It is still under construction--and always will be.

My Four Worlds

Quote of the Month

It is, perhaps, a fact provocative of sour mirth that the Bill of Rights was designed trustfully to prohibit forever two of the favorite crimes of all known governments: the seizure of private property without adequate compensation and the invasion of the citizen's liberty without justifiable cause.... It is a fact provocative of mirth yet more sour that the execution of these prohibitions was put into the hands of courts, which is to say, into the hands of lawyers, which is to say, into the hands of men specifically educated to discover legal excuses for dishonest, dishonorable and anti-social acts.

My first novel, published by Baen, is historical fiction set in an invented historical background (or, if you prefer, fantasy without magic). It has a web page showing the lovely map created for me by Chris Porter. The book is available online as part of the Baen Free Library, and I have webbed podcasts of the entire book, read by me. Baen also has a webbed interview with me about the book.

My second novel, this time a fantasy with magic, does not yet have a publisher, but it is up on Amazon as a Kindle file.

I have now webbed the online version of my most recent book, Future Imperfect; comments welcome.

My book Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters, published by Princeton University Press, is accompanied by a book web page which contains images of the entire book along with an extensive system of links--think of them as virtual footnotes--to additional material. An earlier draft is also webbed, in a somewhat more readable form, but without the links.

An earlier book was Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, published by Harper-Collins. Click to see the Table of Contents and a sample chapter (on the economics of crime). Copies are available from Laissez-Faire books and Amazon.com as well as many local bookstores. There is even a webbed transcript of my appearance on Book Notes discussing the book. German and Japanese translations of the book are also in print.

Click here for the online errata--errors corrected as they come in, starting with Figure 3-1b.

All of one earlier book of mine, Price Theory: An Intermediate Text, is available on the web, including the two chapters of the first edition that were left out of the second edition.

All of my first book, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism (2nd edn) is now webbed, both as a pdf and as a MobiPocket e-book file.

Drafts of an articles on The Market for Students and the future of stateless societies; a few years ago I delivered a paper dealing with market failure and arguments for and against government at the Mont Pelerin Meeting in Reykjavik.

I teach at Santa Clara University in the Law School and (sometimes) the Business School. Last spring I taught courses on Analytic Methods for Lawyers and Economic Analysis of Law. This spring I am teaching a seminar on Legal Systems Very Different from Ours and one on Legal Issues of the 21st Century. My class pages include recording of many of the classes.

My wife says that when someone points a camera at me I look as if was facing a firing squad. I am not sure if this (from at talk I gave at Texas Christian University entitled "In Defense of Anarchy") is an improvement.

If you prefer color, this one was taken on a visit to Iceland some years back, and this was taken, and webbed, by Declan McCullagh.