David Friedman is an academic economist with a doctorate in physics who has spent the past twenty-two years teaching in a law school. His first book, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism, was published in 1973 and includes a description of how a society with property rights and without government might function. There as elsewhere, he offers a consequentialist defense of libertarianism.
His most recent non-fiction book, Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World, examines the implications of a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades. His current book project, not yet published, is Legal Systems Very Different from Ours, covering systems from Periclean Athens through modern Amish and Romany. He is also the author of two novels, one commercially published and one self-published, and, with his wife, a self-published medieval and renaissance cookbook and a larger self-published book related to their hobby of historical recreation.
Much of his published work, including journal articles, essays, drafts of forthcoming work and the full text of several books, can be read on his web page: www.daviddfriedman.com. He comments on a wide range of issues on his blog, Ideas, at http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com David is the son of American economist Milton Friedman.
Topic: Market Failure, an Argument Both For and Against Government.