Book Reviews

Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist

It was in the early 1970s that I first learned of Lysander Spooner’s ideas. The six volumes of his Collected Works, which were published in 1971 and which I purchased soon thereafter, played an important part in my intellectual development as a voluntaryist. I was the person who in 1976 unearthed Spooner’s essay “Vices Are [...]

24Aug2011 | Carl Watner | 7 comments | Continued

The Struggle to Limit Government: A Modern Political History

Today’s most crucial policy battles are about federal spending and the scope of government power. Cato Institute scholar John Samples reminds us in this book that those battles have their origins in the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the Great Society. Early in the twentieth century Herbert Croly (cofounder of The New Republic) argued [...]

24Aug2011 | Greg Kaza | 0 comments | Continued

Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea

It has always been hard to pin down just what “conservatism” stands for, what with people of such widely divergent views as Barry Goldwater, Jerry Falwell, and both George Bushes described by that term. The relatively recent addition to the political lexicon of “neoconservatism” complicates matters further. What do “neocons” believe? Where do their ideas [...]

24Aug2011 | George C. Leef | 4 comments | Continued

The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It

Class is a libertarian issue. Classical liberals Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer pioneered class analysis before Karl Marx, and he gave them credit for doing so. Class was a central feature of the work of such libertarian stalwarts as Franz Oppenheimer, Albert Jay Nock, and Frank Chodorov, former editor of The Freeman. Class theory formed the [...]

24Aug2011 | Gary Chartier | 5 comments | Continued

The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History

In my M.B.A. economics class I emphasize the Austrian view of entrepreneurship, noting that successful entrepreneurs are rewarded for moving resources from lower-valued to higher-valued uses in a free market. Alas I also spend time explaining “political entrepreneurship”: exploiting connections with “the right people” to profit by moving resources from uses consumers would value highly [...]

22Jun2011 | William L. Anderson | 5 comments | Continued

How the Economy Works

This book is slim. It’s also well written, which is always a surprise when the author is an academic economist. But don’t let the concision and breezy style fool you. UCLA economics professor Roger Farmer offers a big idea that he’s convinced will reduce both the frequency and size of economic booms and busts. Unfortunately [...]

22Jun2011 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 2 comments | Continued

How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

Ignorance of economics is rampant. The average person believes the secret to prosperity is consumption and was often led to that fallacy by professional economists who should know better. Economic education in the universities has been as much a part of the problem as the solution, with millions of students taught Keynesian beliefs about government [...]

22Jun2011 | Robert Batemarco | 4 comments | Continued

Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy against the American Taxpayer

Politics has one feature that sets it apart from all sorts of voluntary action: It employs coercion. Politicians can raid the wallets of taxpayers, forcing them to part with money they would rather spend, donate, or invest according to their own desires. Much of the money thus confiscated is then spent to succor special-interest groups [...]

22Jun2011 | George C. Leef | 5 comments | Continued

The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from New Research on Well-Being

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . [...]

25May2011 | Bruce Yandle | 1 comment | Continued

The Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America

William L. Marcy has written an extensive and cogent historical critique of the U.S. war against the cocaine trade originating in Latin America. As the title indicates, he shows how this counterproductive war has led to a thriving drug industry in the Americas. Marcy criticizes U.S. policy for conflating the drug war and the Cold [...]

25May2011 | Ivan Eland | 0 comments | Continued

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a New Life

I like to compare the rival coalitions of organized capital represented by the major parties to two farmers. One farmer thinks it’s more profitable in the long run to work his livestock in moderation and feed them well. The other figures he’ll come out ahead by just working them to death and replacing them. I [...]

25May2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 7 comments | Continued

Six Political Illusions: A Primer on Government for Idealists Fed Up with History Repeating Itself

You don’t believe in magic, do you? Magicians employ a variety of tricks to deceive audiences into thinking that something has happened that can’t. They are masters of illusion. Adults know that they’re being fooled when the rabbit seems to materialize out of an empty hat. Magic is harmless fun, but the government is not. [...]

25May2011 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued

Imposing Values: An Essay on Liberalism and Regulation

Liberalism comes in two varieties, classical and modern. All liberals support limitations on government power, but modern liberalism favors, while classical liberalism opposes, significant interference with private property rights. N. Scott Arnold’s book on the classical-modern liberal debate focuses on the modern-liberal regulatory agenda, especially employment law (such as collective bargaining rules and antidiscrimination law), health [...]

21Apr2011 | Daniel Shapiro | 1 comment | Continued

Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It

Congestion is five times worse than in 1995. Why? What should we do about it? Those questions drive Randal O’Toole’s Gridlock. The main reason for the increase, the author writes, is that beginning in the 1960s, “Many people looked at the costs of the automobile without considering the benefits, and their solution was to get [...]

21Apr2011 | Gary M. Galles | 26 comments | Continued

Bought and Paid For

Americans who have at least a modicum of political sophistication know that special-interest groups have enormous power to influence the political system, getting favors from government they couldn’t obtain through voluntary means. Informed people know, for example, that many farmers receive subsidies, that labor unions have privileges to employ coercion that no other private organization [...]

21Apr2011 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion Versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America

We all, like sheep, have gone astray. We have sinned. We must humble ourselves. We must repent and turn from our wicked ways. These are the messages of our modern-day secular religions: economic religion and environmental religion. Throughout The New Holy Wars, Robert H. Nelson uses theological reasoning to explore them. His book is an [...]

21Apr2011 | Art Carden | 1 comment | Continued

The Road to Big Brother: One Man’s Struggle Against The Surveillance Society

As I write this review, millions of Americans are annoyed if not outraged over the recent measures adopted by the so-called Transportation Security Agency. Airline travelers hate the choice between going through a scanner that effectively undresses them and an aggressive grope of their bodies. Are those offensive procedures necessary? Are they legal? What is [...]

23Mar2011 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued
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