“Producing laws is not an easier problem than producing cars or food,” says David Friedman, author, philosopher, and professor at Santa Clara University. “So if the government’s incompetent to produce cars or food, why do you expect it to do a good job producing the legal system within which you are then going to produce the cars and the food?”

So as I wrote yesterday, regular blogging shall resume. I’m busy drafting, and the next post will be a continuation of the Anarchy Begins at Home series. That will focus on how in a Paleolithic context, we’re pretty much socialists and commies at heart (hyperbole alert!). Of course, there’s a twist…a twist I’ll show you.

To get you in the right mindset, get your outrage fired up, get your commie on—or whatever—for comments, I have an interesting little video that popped onto my radar screen just a bit ago. Reason TV entitles it: David Friedman on How to Privatize Everything. Bullshit title: because, the whole 7 minutes is about anarchy, through and through. Take a look.

David (webpage the same design since 1995 or so), son of Milton, looks great…I think. Actually, better than when I had a dinner with him—at he and his wife’s favorite Chinese restaurant, circa ’95…so 17 years ago. David was on Usenet where I met him, read his longstanding anarcho-capitalist tract, The Machinery of Freedom (now free on the web, PDF as well as mobi), argued, etc.

I always liked David primarily for his intellectual honesty. In the context of an academic, he has the rare disposition of a practiced humility and skeptic of even his own ideas—but not skepticism to the point of impotence. He simply never overstates, never appeals to the authority of Milton, etc. Here was his 11/16/2006 post on his blog the day his dad died.

David Friedman’s blog Eulogy of his father, Milton Friedman

I part with others who insist David and Milton’s epistemology, principles, whatever…are not as I would prefer.

Above all, I aced accounting classes in college. Get it? I never overly focus on one side or the other of a balance sheet, or a profit and loss. I’m a bottom line guy, and there is simply no such thing as a bottom line all about pluses—except in religious fantasies or other ideologies that demand rigid adherence and allegiance to principles, regardless of how good or valid such principles might be.

In the end, we’re all fallible, frustrating, sidetracked and…human; and rule number one is dealing with that reality.