Archive for Brian Summers
Perspective: Legacy
What kind of world will we leave to our children? Will they be burdened with our debts? With interest on the national debt becoming the major part of Federal spending, with unfunded Social Security obligations soaring into the trillions of dollars, with “off-budget” Federally insured loans piling on trillions of dollars in more debt, one [...]
1Aug1991 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Agriculture And The State: Market Processes And Bureaucracy by E. C. Pasour, Jr.
Holmes & Meier, 30 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003 1990 • 258 pages • $39.50 cloth, $19.95 paper Federal agricultural programs cost American taxpayers billions of dollars a year, and add hundreds of dollars to the average family’s food bill. Yet few people are more than vaguely aware of these programs, and almost no [...]
1Mar1991 | Brian Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedPerspective: Nurturing Good or Evil
C. S. Lewis, in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, reminds us that good and evil do not spring up in a moral vacuum. He writes: “The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps. [...]
1Mar1991 | Brian Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedPerspective: China: Why the Worst Got on Top
The recent slaughter of student demonstrators in China’s Tiananmen Square led me to reread “Why the Worst Get on Top,” a chapter in F. A. Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom, written in 1944. Why were the Chinese authorities so brutal? Why did the soldiers shoot their own countrymen? Consider Hayek’s perceptive comments about totalitarian [...]
1Oct1989 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Primacy of Freedom
Mr. Summers is a senior editor of this journal. This piece appeared in Ideas on Liberty: Essays in Honor of Paul L. Poirot, an anthology to mark Dr. Poirot’s thirty years as Managing Editor of The Freeman. There is a time to ask basic questions. Now, as we mark the retirement of Dr. Paul L. [...]
1Feb1988 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Moral Foundations of Property Rights
Mr. Summers is a senior editor of The Freeman. An earlier version of this article appeared in the Fall 1982 issue of Lincoln Review. Property rights are human rights. They do not belong to property; they belong to people who hold them with respect to property. Property rights include a person’s fights of possession—the rights [...]
1Nov1986 | Brian Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Review: Discovery and the Capitalist Process by Israel M. Kirzner
The University of Chicago Press, 5801 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637 * 1985 * 192 pages, $22.50 cloth Government creates barriers. In a market economy, it sets up barriers against fraud and coercion, so that people can go about their peaceful affairs without let or hindrance. Interventionist government, however, creates barriers which tax, regulate, [...]
1Feb1986 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedA Page on Freedom: Number 24
Something Better “Do you want to go downtown tonight to see a movie?” “No thanks. There’s a better movie I want to watch on TV.” My friend made a choice. After weighing the pluses and minuses, he chose movie A over movie B. He went to see the movie he preferred. This is the essence [...]
1Oct1985 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedA Page on Freedom: Number 18
Winners and Losers It all seems so obvious. For every winner there must be a loser. This is true in sports, gambling, love and war. Shouldn’t it also be true for economics? But in economics, as we shall see, what at first glance appears to be obvious often turns out to be false. Suppose you [...]
1Apr1985 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Free Market Energy: The Way to Benefit Consumers edited by S. Fred Singer and The Resourceful Earth edited by Julian L. Simon and Herman Kahn
Free Market Energy: The Way to Benefit Consumers edited by S. Fred Singer (Universe Books, 381 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016), 1984 • 430 pages • $19.95 cloth, $8.95 paperback The Resourceful Earth edited by Julian L. Simon and Herman Kahn (Basil Blackwell, 432 Park Avenue South, Suite 1505, New York, N.Y. [...]
1Dec1984 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Pieces of Eight: the Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution by Edwin Vieira, Jr.
(Devin-Adair, 143 Sound Beach Avenue, Box A, Old Greenwich, CT 06870), 1984 391 pages • $19.95 paperback This is a scholarly, thoroughly documented analysis of the monetary powers of the United States Constitution, and how these powers have been disabled by Congress, the Courts, and Presidential edicts. The arguments are cogent, with numerous references to [...]
1Oct1984 | Brian Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Review: Power And Privilege: Labor Unions in America by Morgan O. Reynolds
(Universe Books, 381 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016), 1984 309 pages • $14.95 cloth Morgan Reynolds does an admirable job in analyzing labor unions, their legal privileges, and their economic consequences. His carefully reasoned arguments are easy to follow and are buttressed with many telling examples. The reader needs to bring nothing more [...]
1May1984 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedA Page on Freedom: Number 5
Social Responsibility Profit-seeking businessmen are often accused of neglecting their social responsibilities. But in a free and open market, profit-seeking itself performs an important social function. To see this, we need to understand free market pricing. In an unhampered market, the businessman adjusts his asking price so as to just sell all his products. If [...]
1Apr1984 | Brian Summers | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Natural Resources: Bureaucratic Myths and Environmental Management by Richard L. Stroup and John A. Baden
(Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 635 Mason Street, San Francisco, CA 94108) 1983 148 pages • $25.00 cloth, $9.95 paperback The battle lines over environmental issues seem to be clearly drawn. On one side stand private landowners and businessmen, supposedly bent on plundering natural resources. Opposing them are government bureaucrats, who seem to form [...]
1Mar1984 | Brian Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Review: The Mystery of Banking by Murray N. Rothbard
(Richardson & Snyder, 25 Broad Street, New York, N.Y. 10004), 1983 286 pages • $19.95 cloth this book is an introduction to the fractional reserve banking system, its history and its consequences. The approach is straightforward, with each chapter building upon previous chapters, much in the manner of an introductory course in money and banking. [...]
1Jan1984 | Brian Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Review: Death And Taxes by Hans F Sennholz
(Center for Futures Education, P.O. Box 489, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613), 1982 • 105 pages • $5.95 paperback Herbert Hoover put it right on the line: “The American people have from the earliest moments been alive to the evils of inherited economic power. Several million dollars is economic power and too often it falls into [...]
1Jul1983 | Brian Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedEconomic Recovery
Mr. Summers is a member of the staff of The Foundation for Economic Education. Americans are once again hoping for an economic recovery. If recovery comes, can it be sustained? Or will it soon collapse, as have recent upturns? The answer depends on how the recovery is financed. If economic recovery is financed from the [...]
1Jan1983 | Brian Summers | 4 comments | Continued-
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