Publisher's Notes
• Editor Tibor Machan's paper "On Pursuing Utopias" (which was warmly received at the World Future Society's First General Assembly in Washington, D.C. this May) will be published shortly in THE FUTURIST. The magazine is published bimonthly by the World Future Society, Box 19285, Twentieth Street Station, Washington, D.C. 20036. Subscription price is $7.50 per year and includes membership in WFS.
• We have learned that INNOVATION the excellent and expensive magazine of The Innovation Group has accepted an article on libertarianism. The author is Robert Patton, a graduate student and lecturer in physics at Hunter College (and a REASON subscriber). INNOVATION is published monthly at $35 per year by Technology Communication, Inc., 265 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016.
• Several people associated with REASON have chapters in a recently published book on campus riots. The book is THE UNIVERSITY UNDER SIEGE, (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1971) edited by Jaquelyn Estrada of San Diego. REASON Editor Tibor Machan and REASON contributor Cheri Kent coauthored "The Misuses of the University." Contributing Editor Larry Friedlander and several young students of Objectivism wrote other chapters in the book.
• The Spring of 1971 issue of THE PERSONALIST, a scholarly journal of philosophy edited by Professor John Hospers, contains the proceedings of the First Annual Political Philosophy Conference, held last fall at the University of Southern California. The conference was sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies of Menlo Park, California, and was coordinated by Professor Hospers and Editor Tibor Machan. The theme of the conference was "The Nature of a Humane Society and Its Institutions for Maintaining Justice." Participants included Professor John Nelson, Nathaniel Branden, Sidney Hook, and others.
• Follow-Up to Previous Article—Robert Poole's article "Leverage Points for Social Change" (REASON, June 1971) discussed the New York City Rand Institute's devastating report on rent control and described the City Council's covert plan gradually to phase out rent control. Since then, events have moved faster than anticipated. Apparently emboldened by the Rand report, Governor Rockefeller (long a rent control backer) finally switched sides, stating "The time has come to look beyond the politics of rent control. It is time to face the truth that the present rent-control system…actually aggravates the shortage and deprives people of housing." At Rockefeller's urging, the Legislature passed a bill removing control from all vacated apartments, prohibiting the City from imposing more stringent controls on apartments currently occupied, and decontrolling all apartments not used as the tenant's "primary residence."
The extent to which supply and demand have been artificially separated may be gauged by a look at Rand Institute's estimates of the probable rent increases. For pre-1947 apartments that become vacant, the average increase will be $50 per month, with many of the better apartments' increases running as high as $150. Up to 200,000 of the 1.3 million pre-1947 apartments are expected to become vacant this year. Rents for new tenants in the 400,000 post-1947 apartments (first put under rent "stabilization" in 1969) will also rise substantially for new tenants. Meanwhile, families who remain in the pre-1947 apartments will still pay the 7½% annual increase previously voted by the City Council in their phased decontrol plan.
• The April 1971 issue of PEACE PLANS contains several exhaustive, carefully-researched articles by Editor J.M. Zube, covering "Voluntary Education, Voluntarily Financed," "Free Immigration," and "Voluntary Taxation in a Voluntarist Society." PEACE PLANS is available at $2 for 4 issues or $5 for 12 issues from J.M. Zube, Wilshire Street, Berrima, New South Wales, Australia.
• REASON will offer a free one year subscription or gift subscription to be awarded to the best letter received and published in each future issue. Only one letter each month will earn the award and all decisions by our editorial board are final.