🌿 About „Jasay’s Garden“

Welcome to Jasay’s Garden — a space for reflection on political economy, the history of ideas, and the economic past.
Inspired by the clarity and independence of Anthony de Jasay, this newsletter explores how liberty takes root — in thought, in institutions, and in the often messy terrain of history – as well as how coercion and collective authority grow rampantly.

Here you’ll find essays on:

• Classical liberal traditions in political economic thought

• Historical snapshots of economic transformation

• Forgotten thinkers and underrated ideas

• Contemporary debates through the lens of liberty and order.

I write from a Central European perspective, drawing on both academic training and a longstanding engagement with liberal thought. Many of these ideas have grown over the years on www.forum-freie-gesellschaft.de — and now find new soil here. 🌱

Whether you’re a fellow traveler in liberalism in the classical sense, a lover of intellectual and economic history, or simply curious about the roots of free societies — welcome. 🍃 You’re invited to read, reflect, and take part.

Let’s cultivate clarity — and give liberty the room it needs to grow. 🌿

Written and edited by Michael von Prollius
For contact or collaboration: mvp@prollius.de

🌳 🌲What Grows in a Garden?

“To think clearly is a rare achievement. To write without illusion, rarer still.”
— (fictional, but could have been written by Jasay)

There is a certain luxury in thinking slowly.

Not as indulgence, but as resistance. In a time where urgency masquerades as importance, where commentary outpaces understanding, to take one’s time — to think with care — is to push back.

This space, Jasay’s Garden, is for that kind of thinking. It is not a battleground for slogans, nor a dispatch from the front lines of daily politics. It is a place for questions, not answers; for patterns, not positions.

Here, I want to reflect — on political economy, on the history of ideas, on the paths we’ve taken and those we might still choose. I will draw on the quiet clarity of thinkers who asked first principles instead of chasing headlines: Anthony de Jasay among them, but not only him. You may meet forgotten economists, reluctant philosophers, even bureaucrats who wrote better than they ruled.

If this sounds like a garden, that’s because it is one. Things grow here: thoughts, doubts, memories. But only with patience.

You are warmly invited to walk along.