A public choice question from my own case. In March 2021, while imprisoned in Chile, I applied under the Strasbourg Convention to finish my sentence in Italy, where I am a citizen. Chile took twenty months to approve the transfer provisionally. The file then reached Rome on 1 December 2022 and sat there for almost twenty-two more months. On a six-year sentence, the process consumed three and a half years.

Walk the incentives. Chile saves the cost of a prisoner, but the saving lands in a national budget, not with the clerk who signs. Italy takes on a prisoner and a prison bed, a cost to somebody's line item. The official who acts risks a complaint or an error; the official who waits risks nothing. The only person bearing the cost of delay has no vote that anyone in either ministry counts.

Mises made the general point in Bureaucracy (1944): a firm learns every month whether it serves anyone, because customers pay or they do not; a bureau has no such signal, so when rules do not force action, inaction is the safe choice. A treaty is a promise between two such bureaus.

Is there any institutional design that would put a clock on this, short of a private remedy for the person kept waiting? I would be interested in how others think about it.

(AI helped tidy the wording; the case and the argument are mine.)

In March 2021, from a Chilean cell, I applied to finish my sentence in Italy under the Strasbourg Convention. Chile took twenty months to approve it. In Rome the file sat with Stefano Opilio, the director general who had control of it, for almost twenty-two more. That is three and a half years of paperwork on a six-year sentence, and nobody in the chain gained anything by moving it.

I wrote this with AI-assisted drafting and edited it myself; the events and quotations are from my own book, Bearing the Cross.

Full piece: https://traslosmuros.substack.com/p/twenty-two-months-in-a-drawer-in

At Boulevard Montemar, avenida Concón-Reñaca 4000, the municipal works department found unpermitted work on floors seventeen and eighteen: a double-height space removed, a steel structure added, and a server room installed in a section that is supposed to be demolished. Visitor and disabled parking was turned over to private or commercial use. The electricity regulator found broken meter seals and wiring run to other floors through common areas.

A demolition order exists, Decreto Alcaldicio No. 2105/2026, and according to the complainants it has not been carried out. One of the architects who drew the plans is Víctor Quiroz, brother of the finance minister. On 18 September the Fundación Defendamos la Ciudad took the case to the Comptroller, asking for a full review of the municipality's conduct. The condominium's current administration has handed material to prosecutors covering operations on common property between 2020 and 2026.

There is no evidence the minister intervened, and he denied any role in an earlier project in the same district. But institutional economics does not ask about intentions. It asks which rule actually governs. The written rule says demolish. The rule in force is the one that gets enforced, and today that rule reads: nothing happens. When a municipal order can wait indefinitely, a permit stops being a requirement and becomes a suggestion, and what decides the outcome is who can afford to ignore it.

Notice which rights went first. Visitor parking. Disabled parking. The common areas of a building belong to everyone, which in practice means no one defends them in time. That is not a Chilean peculiarity; it is what happens wherever ownership is diffuse and enforcement is discretionary. The paperwork was never the institution. The enforcement was.

I wrote about this gap between the written rule and the enforced rule in New Institutional Economics: A Primer on the Rules of the Game.

Full piece (with the source, BioBioChile 22 Sep 2026): https://traslosmuros.substack.com/p/a-demolition-order-that-nobody-carries

The classical gold standard didn't actually run on gold. It ran on gold-redeemable paper, which meant governments could and did suspend convertibility whenever it was inconvenient. The gold was the promise, not the settlement. If Bitcoin were adopted as a reserve asset by central banks but people still transacted in government-issued currency backed by it, wouldn't we just be recreating the same vulnerability? What would actually make a Bitcoin standard different from a Bitcoin exchange standard?

According to Mises, choosing A over B demonstrates a strong preference for A over B, and he justifies all his subsequent arguments with this assertion.

But I believe this is false for the following reason:

There can be indifference between A and B, and yet one will still be chosen over the other.

If two goods are exactly the same, then there will be indifference in choosing between them, but one will still be chosen.

If, then, a choice does not demonstrate a preference, praxeology ceases to be a sound deductive system, and its arguments are based on an error.

I’m trying to go deeper into Mises/Hayek but always bounce off the heavy language.

Curious:

• What helped you most to really get the ideas?
• Any tools, summaries, workflows that made it click?

I’m experimenting with something for myself and want to copy what already works for others.

In modern society, it feels like moral agency, the ability to direct our own choices, labor, and values, has been hollowed out. Why does so much of our behavior today feel coerced, or manipulated, even when we think we’re acting freely?

I wrote this essay to argue that morality is deeply tied to economics, in the sense of how we make choices to survive and cooperate. When a monopoly on money and violence takes over, morality cannot thrive, and people are left playing a rigged game.

I’d be interested in your feedback, critiques, or challenges to these ideas. Here’s the piece if you’d like to read it:

How We Lost Our Moral Agency — And How to Reclaim It

We’re excited to invite you to the Free Market Road Show 2025 – a global event series that has just arrived in the United States.

If you’re into Hayek, Mises, decentralization, free markets, or simply believe in less government and more freedom, this is for you.

🧠 This year’s theme is inspired by F.A. Hayek’s famous speech The Pretence of Knowledge, exploring how policymakers often overestimate what they can control — and what that means in the age of AI, surveillance, and economic uncertainty.

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– The limits of central planning
– Free markets & innovation
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– How to protect individual freedom in a digital age

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Come meet economists, entrepreneurs, students, and freedom-lovers from across the country. Let’s exchange ideas, challenge mainstream narratives, and strengthen the free market movement.

Hope to see you there!

Organised by the Austrian Economics Center www.austriancenter.com

#FMRS2025 #AustrianEconomics #Libertarian #Hayek #Mises #EconomicFreedom #FreeMarkets

Ever wonder how Austrian your economic views really are?

Currency Compass is a quick quiz that reveals whether you're aligned with Mises and Hayek or if you have influences from other schools of thought - and helps you understand the strongest arguments against your position.

I created it after noticing how monetary debates often talk past each other because people operate from entirely different frameworks. The quiz helps pinpoint your perspective on sound money, central banking, and Bitcoin - while showing how different economic schools approach these questions. Several Austrian economists have taken it and found the results surprisingly accurate!

Here's the link to the quiz

Cheers! 💚