Columns
Fearing Hayek
I’m sensing some panic in the air. Certain people seem mighty concerned that other people are . . . discovering Hayek. As a W. S. Gilbert character might say, Oh horror!
9Dec2011 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Failure of Market Failure
Which process has better built-in mechanisms to provide the knowledge and incentives necessary to notice imperfections and improve on them?
8Dec2011 | Steven Horwitz | 41 comments | ContinuedDestroying Childhood to Save Children
Laws that mandate the reporting of any suspicious contact with children will result in a dramatic increase in false or malicious accounts that harm innocent people.
6Dec2011 | Wendy McElroy | 26 comments | ContinuedIndefinite Detention and the Free Society
The free market, and the free society in general, cannot be understood without also understanding their indispensable political, legal, and moral conditions.
2Dec2011 | Sheldon Richman | 20 comments | ContinuedTwo Thoughts on Occupy Wall Street
If you want a peaceful, prosperous, and pleasant world, work to encourage commerce and limit the State.
1Dec2011 | Steven Horwitz | 37 comments | ContinuedElizabeth Warren’s Non Sequitur
Elizabeth Warren, who’s running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, made quite a splash on the Internet with remarks to supporters in which she said: There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved [...]
30Nov2011 | Sheldon Richman | 17 comments | ContinuedPopulation Control Nonsense
According to an American Dream article, “Al Gore, Agenda 21 and Population Control,” there are too many of us and it has a negative impact on the earth. Here’s what the United Nations Population Fund said in its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009, “Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate”: [...]
30Nov2011 | Walter E. Williams | 10 comments | ContinuedKeynesianism Doesn’t Mean Bigger Government?
The debate over what John Maynard Keynes “really” meant by the theories he put forward in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money has been going on almost since it was published in 1936. The release of the second Hayek-Keynes hip-hop video brought this debate back to a boil. For example, in a May [...]
30Nov2011 | Steven Horwitz | 4 comments | ContinuedTen Years After
After 9/11 the U.S. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). America went to war, overtly and covertly, in several countries. Nearly $8 trillion was spent on what is called “security,” Chris Hellman of the National Priorities Project estimates. Was it worth it? Yes, in many ways, says author [...]
30Nov2011 | John Stossel | 4 comments | ContinuedImprisoning Innocents
We often engage in behaviors that endanger ourselves and are protected from such actions by warnings—instinctual or those issued by parents, priests, politicians, and physicians. The penalty for ignoring most warnings is the consequence of our actions. In only a few exceptions—“suicidal ideation” or “threat” being one—are we punished for such actions by agents of [...]
30Nov2011 | Thomas Szasz | 5 comments | ContinuedThe First Government Bailouts: The Story of the RFC
The idea of using federal money to bail out large failing corporations did not begin with the Bush administration. In the beginning was the RFC, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which President Herbert Hoover pretentiously named and bountifully funded during the Great Depression to bail out corporations deemed too big to fail. In 1932 Congress gave [...]
30Nov2011 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 1 comment | ContinuedSocial Cooperation, Part 2
Last month I wrote about Ludwig von Mises’s emphasis on social cooperation as the basis of his economic philosophy, particularly in his magnum opus, Human Action. I thought I’d follow up with more thoughts on this subject. Mises was no maverick in this regard. Interest in social cooperation pervades the best classical-liberal and libertarian thought. [...]
30Nov2011 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedWanted: A Healthy Dose of Humility
An awful lot of people in this world are really puffed up about themselves. One of the character traits I wish were much more widely practiced these days is good old-fashioned humility. T. S. Eliot said, “Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well [...]
30Nov2011 | Lawrence W. Reed | 5 comments | ContinuedFacebook and Familiar Strangers
The genesis and development of early cities, the foundation of the Great Society, depended as much on the freedom to break old, strong ties as on the freedom to form of new, weak ones.
29Nov2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 29 comments | ContinuedWhy the Titanic Is Sinking
The Declaration of Gratitude would destroy the assumption that government spending harms no one.
23Nov2011 | James L. Payne | 18 comments | ContinuedThe Roots of Surveillance America
A supremely political animal, J. Edgar Hoover occupied high office for nearly 50 years, during which he was instrumental in laying the foundation for a national security state.
22Nov2011 | Wendy McElroy | 13 comments | ContinuedPutting Bureaucracy First: Rachel Maddow’s Progressivism
Bureaucratic dominance does not merely lower material living standards or reduce profit opportunities. It crushes lives and dreams.
18Nov2011 | Sheldon Richman | 31 comments | Continued-
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