The Big Apple
The City of New York, often called New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 784 km², New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described uniquely as the cultural, financial and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
Geographical type: Metropolis
Latitude: 40.71° N — Longitude: 74.01° W
Area: 34,490 km²
Birthplace of
Walter Block, in Brooklyn, on 21 Aug 1941
Harry Browne, Harry Edson Browne, on 17 Jun 1933
William Henry Chamberlin, in Brooklyn, on 17 Feb 1897
Frank Chodorov, Fishel Chodorowsky, in Manhattan, on 15 Feb 1887
Nelson DeMille, in Jamaica, Queens, on 23 Aug 1943
Richard Ebeling, on 30 Jan 1950
Richard Epstein, Richard Allen Epstein, in Brooklyn, on 17 Apr 1943
David D. Friedman, David Director Friedman, on 12 Feb 1945
Milton Friedman, in Brooklyn, on 31 Jul 1912
Nick Gillespie, Nicholas John Gillespie, in Brooklyn, on 7 Aug 1963
Percy L. Greaves Jr., on 24 Aug 1906
Stanley Kubrick, in Manhattan, on 26 Jul 1928
Leonard Liggio, in The Bronx, on 5 Jul 1933
Patrick McGoohan, in Astoria, Queens, on 19 Mar 1928
Tonie Nathan, Theodora Nathalia Nathan, on 9 Feb 1923
Robert Nozick, in Brooklyn, on 16 Nov 1938
Ralph Raico, in East Harlem, on 23 Oct 1936
George Reisman, George Gerald Reisman, on 13 Jan 1937
Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., in Manhattan, on 27 Oct 1858
Murray N. Rothbard, Murray Newton Rothbard, in The Bronx, on 2 Mar 1926
Chris Matthew Sciabarra, in Brooklyn, on 17 Feb 1960
Robert Sirico, Robert Alan Sirico, in Brooklyn, on 23 Jun 1951
Joan Kennedy Taylor, in Manhattan, on 21 Dec 1926
Robert Anton Wilson, in Brooklyn, on 18 Jan 1932
Deathplace of
Stephen Pearl Andrews, on 21 May 1886
Randolph Bourne, on 22 Dec 1918
Frank Chodorov, in Manhattan, on 28 Dec 1966
John Bates Clark, on 21 Mar 1938
Greta Garbo, in Manhattan, on 15 Apr 1990
William Lloyd Garrison, on 24 May 1879
John Taylor Gatto, on 25 Oct 2018
Henry George, on 29 Oct 1897
Henry Hazlitt, on 9 Jul 1993
Edward Herrmann, in Manhattan, on 31 Dec 2014
Herbert Hoover, on 20 Oct 1964
John Lennon, on 8 Dec 1980
Ludwig von Mises, on 10 Oct 1973
Richard Nixon, on 22 Apr 1994
Thomas Paine, in Greenwich Village, on 8 Jun 1809
Murray N. Rothbard, on 7 Jan 1995
Aaron Swartz, in Brooklyn, on 11 Jan 2013
Joan Kennedy Taylor, on 29 Oct 2005
Articles
Benjamin Tucker, Liberty and Individualist Anarchism [PDF], by Wendy McElroy, The Independent Review, 1997
Presents a short biography of Tucker and then the history of the Liberty journal, including its major themes, the debates over Stirnerite egoism vs. natural rights and its literary and international coverage, concluding with commentary
Presents a short biography of Tucker and then the history of the Liberty journal, including its major themes, the debates over Stirnerite egoism vs. natural rights and its literary and international coverage, concluding with commentary
Liberty came to a sudden, tragic end. In 1907, Tucker rented a ground-floor space at 502 Sixth Avenue in New York City, which housed "Benj. R. Tucker’s Unique BookShop." Some blocks away, at 225 Fourth Avenue in a structure known as the Parker Building, Tucker stored the stock of the books he published and the equipment to set print for Liberty. In January 1908, the Parker Building was consumed by a fire that he described in what was to be the last issue [April 1908] of Liberty.
Related Topics: American War Between the States, Individualist Anarchism, Liberty, Rights, Self-ownership, Benjamin Tucker, United States
The Disastrous World of the New York Subway, Part 1, by Gregory Bresiger, Freedom Daily, Feb 2006
This reminds me of a ... trip a few months ago. At Jackson Heights, the train, which was supposed to be an express but had been going local, suddenly stopped for a public debate that didn't amuse weary riders coming home from work: the conductor and the motorman had started arguing over the public address system.
The Disastrous World of the New York Subway, Part 2, by Gregory Bresiger, Freedom Daily, Mar 2006
So, depending on how you measure it, the Second Avenue subway is either 50 or 60 years behind schedule. And a month or so ago, voters approved a new $2.9 billion bond referendum to build — you guessed it! — the Second Avenue subway. Yet the Second Avenue subway is today no closer to a reality than, say, the MTA is to cutting subway fares ...
The Disastrous World of the New York Subway, Part 3, by Gregory Bresiger, Freedom Daily, Apr 2006
New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, like so many other politicians before him, is angry with the transit workers' union. He's safe. He doesn't have to ride the subways. He can always blame government authorities or someone else for the dreadful state of the trains. It's a common strategy whenever things go wrong in government.
I Love Loosies and the People Who Sell Them, by Sheldon Richman, 10 Dec 2014
Explains how New York cigarette taxes contributed to the police crack down that led to the Eric Garner confrontation (and subsequent death) and suggests doing away with the pursuing of nonviolent persons for "victimless so-called crimes"
Explains how New York cigarette taxes contributed to the police crack down that led to the Eric Garner confrontation (and subsequent death) and suggests doing away with the pursuing of nonviolent persons for "victimless so-called crimes"
The cops who ganged up on Eric Garner ... intended only to show him who's boss on the streets of Staten Island ... This pretty much explains the cops' reckless disregard for Garner's life ... Come to think of it, in the eyes of those politicians, threatening the steady flow of taxpayer money is about as serious a crime as anyone can commit. Without that money they would be nothing. That's why New York City officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio ... have ordered the police to crack down on sellers of loosies. The city's accomplices in this highway robbery of smokers are the licensed retailers.
Related Topics: Moral Repression, Taxation
Jane Jacobs: The Spontaneity of Cities, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Jul 2006
Memorial commentary, in particular about Jacob's books against urban planning and about her activism
Memorial commentary, in particular about Jacob's books against urban planning and about her activism
Here's a characteristic passage, illustrating how in a functioning city, strangers look out for other strangers as a matter of course: "A lively street always has both its users and pure watchers. Last year I was on such a street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, waiting for a bus. I had not been there longer than a minute ... a woman who opened a window on the third floor ... shouted down, 'The bus doesn't run here on Saturdays!' ... This woman was one of thousands upon thousands of people in New York who casually take care of the streets. They notice strangers. They observe what's going on ..."
Related Topic: Jane Jacobs
Leonard Read, the Founder and Builder, by Mary Sennholz, The Freeman, May 1996
Biographical essay written by Read's secretary in the early days of FEE, as well as author of Leonard E. Read: Philosopher of Freedom
Biographical essay written by Read's secretary in the early days of FEE, as well as author of Leonard E. Read: Philosopher of Freedom
The founders [of the Foundation for Economic Education] were convinced that New York City, with its splendid education and financial facilities, provided the ideal setting for FEE. But rent control had created a painful shortage of office space while confiscatory income and estate taxation had forced luxury homes and mansions to the market, which were now being sold at fractions of their original construction costs.
Related Topics: Achievement, Foundation for Economic Education, Golf, Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Read, Theodore Roosevelt, Socialism, World War I
New York Politics '93, by Murray N. Rothbard, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Aug 1993
Discusses the potential outcome of the 1993 New York City Mayoral race between David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani, plus a cast of others
Discusses the potential outcome of the 1993 New York City Mayoral race between David Dinkins and Rudolph Giuliani, plus a cast of others
New York is of course a famously left-wing city ... But while the city may be overwhelmingly leftist and Democratic, a complicating factor is race. New York has always been a hotbed of ethnic and racial conflict, but in the days of the old-time political bosses, the guys in the smoke-filled rooms could come out with electoral tickets that were carefully racially and ethnically balanced.
Political Plundering of Property Owners, by James Bovard, Nov 2002
Details the effects of local government land and property seizures allegedly for urban renewal purposes, for improving "blighted" neighborhoods or for the benefit of sports team owners
Details the effects of local government land and property seizures allegedly for urban renewal purposes, for improving "blighted" neighborhoods or for the benefit of sports team owners
Federal community development funds are still bankrolling the razing of large areas of American cities. Tom Gogan, a New York City housing activist, reported that since 1979 federal funds have helped pay for the destruction of as many as 30,000 apartments in New York City ... In 1965, the city of New York evicted 1,300 families on the Lower East Side for an urban-renewal project, promising the evictees that they would have first dibs on housing to be built to replace the demolished units. But in 1988, the city government announced plans to permit the building of luxury apartments on the site instead.
Related Topics: George W. Bush, California, Eminent Domain Protections, Illinois, Michigan, Private Property, Washington, D.C.
Rent Control, by Walter Block, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
Defines rent control, its general effects, its effects on tenants and offers some solutions; citing supporting examples from New York City and elsewhere
Defines rent control, its general effects, its effects on tenants and offers some solutions; citing supporting examples from New York City and elsewhere
New York State legislators defend the War Emergency Tenant Protection Act ... as a way of protecting tenants from war-related housing shortages. The war referred to in the law is not the 2003 war in Iraq, however, or the Vietnam War; it is World War II. That is when rent control started in New York City. Of course, war has very little to do with apartment shortages ... the shortage is created by rent control, the supposed solution ... Rent control has destroyed entire sections of sound housing in New York's South Bronx and has led to decay and abandonment throughout the entire five boroughs of the city.
Samuel Edward Konkin III, by Jeff Riggenbach, 29 Jul 2010
Biographical essay, including examination of Konkin's ideas on the Counter-Economy; transcript of "The Libertarian Tradition" podcast of 20 July 2010
Biographical essay, including examination of Konkin's ideas on the Counter-Economy; transcript of "The Libertarian Tradition" podcast of 20 July 2010
Libertarians tended to gravitate toward certain metropolitan areas. New York was the major center of libertarian social and intellectual activity until sometime in the early 1970s, when the focus of the movement shifted to Los Angeles ... Back in Madison, [Konkin] schemed on how to get to New York, where he could build his new relationship with Rothbard and attend Mises's famous seminar at New York University. He transferred to NYU in the fall term of 1970 ... There was much going on in Manhattan in the early '70s ... There were talks, parties, gatherings of every kind.
Related Topics: Agorism, Robert A. Heinlein, Samuel Edward Konkin III, Libertarianism, Los Angeles, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Security Cameras' Slippery Slope, by Gene Healy, The Washington Examiner, 11 May 2010
Discusses the use of surveillance cameras in New York City, in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom and in the United States, as well as drones by British police
Discusses the use of surveillance cameras in New York City, in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom and in the United States, as well as drones by British police
Times Square has 82 police surveillance cameras, but when jihadist Faisal Shahazad tried to set off a car bomb there May 1, they were no help in catching him. ... That failure hasn't cooled public officials' camera craze, however. New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly wants an electronic eye on every block from Central Park to 34th Street, and New York Sen. Charles Schumer demanded $30 million from the feds to help complete the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which includes a centralized camera network based on London's 'Ring of Steel.'
Senator Feinstein and property rights, by Thomas Sowell, 10 Nov 2003
Discusses Dianne Feinstein's comment that private property is "alive and well" in San Francisco as evidenced by its high property values
Discusses Dianne Feinstein's comment that private property is "alive and well" in San Francisco as evidenced by its high property values
Homelessness is particularly acute in cities with severe rent control laws, such as San Francisco and New York. People sleeping on the sidewalks in Manhattan during the winter can die of exposure, despite far more boarded-up apartment buildings than would be required to house them all. Yet those buildings are boarded up because rent control laws make them uneconomical to operate. The main victims of the politicians and courts over-riding property rights are people who own no property. The main proponents of these violations of property rights are often people who do.
Related Topics: California, Property Rights
Why Be An Economist? To Be Happy, That's Why, by Walter Block, Mises Daily, 21 Dec 2006
Block contrasts his recommendations to students interested in economics (getting a PhD. and becoming a professor or similar career) vs. advice from another professor (majoring in economics and finance with a view towards a finance career)
Block contrasts his recommendations to students interested in economics (getting a PhD. and becoming a professor or similar career) vs. advice from another professor (majoring in economics and finance with a view towards a finance career)
When I was about 18 years old I purchased ... a four-family apartment house in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn ... My next venture, a few years later was 10 family house on East 84th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, potentially a very high-rent district. During the time I was studying ... at Columbia University, I was renting an apartment in a 24-suite building nearby, on 122nd Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue ... I was hot on ... an even bigger proposition: an 80-family building on Broadway in the 90s, right near where Murray Rothbard lived on West 88th Street.
Will You Be Safer If Guns Are Banned? Part 1, by Jarret Wollstein, Freedom Daily, Jul 1994
Considers whether banning guns would reduce crime, citing studies, articles and statistics that show the apparent paradox that gun-control laws tend to increase crime and violence, and explores some reasons for the continued increase in violent crime
Considers whether banning guns would reduce crime, citing studies, articles and statistics that show the apparent paradox that gun-control laws tend to increase crime and violence, and explores some reasons for the continued increase in violent crime
New York City has had a virtual ban on firearms since 1967, yet it also ranks among the most dangerous places in the country to live. ... In New York, a medallion to operate a taxicab costs $150,000. ... It is evident that New York City's near-prohibition is not voluntarily obeyed; estimates of the number of illegal guns in the city range from seven hundred thousand to three million. The New York state commissioner of prisons testified that if one percent of illegal handgun owners in New York City were caught, tried, and sent to prison for a year, the state prison system would collapse.
Related Topics: Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Florida, Occupational Licensing, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C.
Videos
Ron Paul NYC Meetup Group at the NRA, 26 Sep 2007
Big Apple Friends of the NRA dinner at the Masonic Temple, 71 West 23rd Street
The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "New York City" as of 5 Oct 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.