From Mises Blog, 2006:
Galambos and Other Nuts
August 8, 2006 by Stephan Kinsella
It’s predictable. Just like if you criticize a scientologist you are going to get a ton of replies from kooks, so if you criticize Galambos (see links below). So let me be clear: from what I have seen Galambos was some minor cult California hippie figure, who was smart but who not only adopted a kind of bizarre, flaky scientism, but a crankish and absurd view of intellectual property.
(I must say I view as similarly crankish Georgists. And if someone uses the word “allodial,” my crankdar also goes off. See more on libertarian cranks and nutjobs–the income tax protestors/Irwin Schiff nuts, common law court types, militia nuts, etc.)
Am I wrong here? Are there serious thinkers–libertarians, Austrians–who actually view Galambos as more than some kooky, marginal figure, and have profited from his thought?Some Galambos mentions:
- Rothbard and the Galambosians. Funny little story about that nut.
- Fairly extensive interchange w/ Alvin Lowi et al. in the comments to There is No Such Thing As A Free Patent
- Galambos argued that ideas were the primary form of property, claimed a property right in his own ideas, and required his students to agree not to repeat them. In Against Intellectual Property I note that Galambos “took his own ideas to ridiculous lengths dropping a nickel in a fund box every time he used the word “liberty” as a royalty to the descendants of Thomas Paine, the alleged “inventor” of the word “liberty”; and changing his original name from Joseph Andrew Galambos (Jr., presumably) to Andrew Joseph Galambos, to avoid infringing his identically-named father’s rights to the name.”
- Yet More on Galambos (on scientism and engineers etc.)
- In a post about the Tannehills’ The Market For Liberty, Robert Klassen chimes in, in the comments, with some dark hinting that the Tannehills plagiarized Galambos (Brian Gladish makes similar hints in the comments to this post).
- blog discussion of Galambos
- Andrew Galambos — the Unknown Libertarian, by Harry Browne. Mentions Alvin Lowi, who is one of the people who just emailed me in a huff because I was ridiculing Galambos in a recent post
- Shades of Galambos (about someone trying to copyright their name, a la Galambos)
- Wikipedia entry on Galambos
- The Basics of Economic Government, by Stephen H. Foerster (appears to be a summary of some of Galambos’s ideas)
- Evan R. Soulé, Jr., “What Is Volitional Science?”
- The Bridge To Freedom (The Website of Volitional Science)
- On Andrew Galambos and His Primary Property Ideas, Alvin Lowi, Jr.
- A Lasting Encounter, by Alvin Lowi, Jr.
- It All Began With Fred Schwarz, by Gary North (Galambos was “one of the oddest characters in the shadows of libertarian history”).
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Mr Kinsella,
You comments on Galambos betray a depth of ignorance on the topic that leave me astounded that you would have the audacity to be as critical as you have been. You obviously know nothing of Galambos and are relying solely on hear say and innuendo from others who have little or no first hand experience with the topic as well.
I can’t imagine why anyone would lend any credence to your comments on any topic since you appear to be willing to present yourself as an authority on subjects about which you have failed to familiarize yourself with even the most elementary facts.
You appear to be one of those people. that are so plentiful these days, that are so enamored with your own ability to babble that you prefer to babble instead of think.
Thanks. I think Galambos was a complete scientistic quasi-cultist nutter. Anyone who is at all attracted to his insane idea is presumptively a crank in my view. Go back to crank-town, you psycho.
Thanks! If only someone would post Galambos’s unabridged works on the web so we could be non-ignorant about it. Oh, wait, that would be against his own theories. Hahah. doomed by self-Darwinism. Probably a good thing.