Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel

Virginia I. Postrel (born 14 January 1960) is a US political and cultural writer of broadly libertarian, or classical liberal, views. She is best known for her two non-fiction books, The Future and Its Enemies and The Substance of Style. In the former she explains her philosophy, "dynamism," a forward-looking and change-seeking philosophy that generally favors unregulated organization through "spontaneous order". She contrasts it with "stasis," a philosophy that favors top-down control and regulation and is marked by desire to maintain the present state of affairs.

Virginia Postrel was editor of Reason from July 1989 to January 2000, and remained on the masthead as editor-at-large through 2001. Prior to that, she was a reporter for Inc. and The Wall Street Journal. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). From 2000 to 2006, she wrote an economics column for The New York Times and from 2006 to 2009 she wrote the "Commerce and Culture" column for "The Atlantic". (She also appeared on the last episode of the third season of Penn and Teller's Bullshit!.)

Postrel wrote the biweekly column "Commerce & Culture" for The Wall Street Journal until April 2011. Since May 2011, she has written a biweekly column for Bloomberg View.