Blackmail
Subject: a kind request?
how are you doing? Are you safe and healthy?
Incidentally, Łukasz Dominiak and I are preparing a paper on blackmail. Would you be so kind to send me your output on blackmail? And possibly fraud too?
We would appreciate it.
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2020 3:25 PM
To: ‘igorwysocki
Dear Igor:
I wrote an entire book on that subject:
Block, Walter. 2013. Legalize Blackmail. New Orleans: Straylight Publishing, LLC; http://www.straylightpublishing.com; https://gumroad.com/l/SzSd; ISBN 978-0-9910433-0-9 (hardcover), 978-0-9910433-1-6 (e-book). My publisher, bless his heart, is a bit weird. Well, more than a bit weird. He is willing to sell you this new book of mine for whatever price YOU decide upon at Amazon.com. If this isn’t weird, I don’t know what is. Of course, legalizing blackmail, rescinding all laws outlawing blackmail, it cannot be denied, is also a bit weird. Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Legalize-Blackmail-Walter-Block/dp/09
Continuums Part II
To: Kenn Williamson ; Walter Block
Subject: Typhoid Mary
Interesting discussion that you two are having.
I agree with Kenn in principle: libertarianism does not allow for punishing pre-crime (to use the term made popular in the movie, The Minority Report). Pre-crime is how most state regulation works: the state posits that action A might lead to damage, and thus prohibits action A, but that unnecessarily and immorally constrains all of those using their own property engaging in action A who don’t cause the theoretical damage. Only when damage is actually caused, or is imminent, is responsive force justified.
Defending the Undefendable
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2020 7:16 AM
To: ‘Rodney Hide’
Dear Rodney:
Best regards,
Subject: Re: Goodbye Cruel World (short and funny)
Dear Dr Block
I was lucky enough to get included in your reply-all which has emboldened me to reply to you simply to say that your book Defending the Undefendable had a huge impact on me.
It shocked me. And enriched me.
It was a wonderful experience and it has never left me even after all these years.
Thank you
Dear Bob:
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2020 7:40 PM
To: John O’Sullivan ; Melissa O’Sullivan; Jill Evans; Dr. Alan J. Moran ; Eduardo Helguera ; Elisalex von Wuthenau
Letter from a Chinese Student (In Response to a Webinar I Gave in China)
Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2020 9:23 AM
To: ‘Jacqualine Li’
Dear Jacqualine:
Best regards,
To: wblock@LOYNO.edu
Subject: On the webinar of An Austrian Critique of Mainstream Economics
Good morning Professor Block! I’m Jacqualine, who earlier had the honor to be able to join your webinar meeting on the brief introduction of Austrian Economics and some of its differences from the mainstream on Zoom. I’m hoping this email doesn’t come by surprising, cause I was originally planning to conduct this email right after the online meeting till I found out that it should have been around bedtime there in the United States, so I feel it’s best to send this email during daytime for some reason
Defending, Part 2
Subject: Re: Goodbye Cruel World (short and funny)
Oh it was No 1. Until just now, I was unaware of II.
In looking up II, I read of the many distinguished scholars who like me were shocked and enriched by your book.
I am in good company.
Rodney