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Art Needs No State Subsidies
It’s feeding time again, and artists and cultural groups are lining up at the trough. The bailout package approved by Congress in February threw another $50 million at the arts. For the better part of the past year, music impresario Quincy Jones beseeched Barack Obama to add a secretary of arts to his cabinet. In [...]
23Oct2009 | Bruce Edward Walker | 1 comment | ContinuedStealth Expansion of Government Power
The government of the United States spent the year debating major new undertakings, ranging from health care to climate change to energy development to tax reform. Yet a far more fundamental shift, in the form of a rapid and pervasive expansion of government power over the private sector of the economy, has been going on [...]
23Oct2009 | Murray Weidenbaum | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Great Writ Then and Now
The Great Writ Then and Now
by Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy (wendy@wendymcelroy.com) is an author, the editor of ifeminists.com, and a research fellow for the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.
Habeas corpus is a rarely invoked legal writ, or document, widely considered to be the cornerstone of individual liberty. Also known as The Great Writ, habeas corpus (ad [...]
Old, Bold Futility
In economic analysis and policy formulation, profundity is not to be confused with complexity. And simple logic is not the same as simplicity. Reliance in thought and communication on shortcut slogans and mottos yields not solution but fiasco.
With employment slumping, many would have us believe in a simplistic “bold economic recovery program.” With vast public-works [...]
The Mystique of Hedge Funds
Hedge funds are controversial these days. Though it’s unlikely that the average citizen or the average congressman could say just what hedge funds do, many are certain they must be reined in by additional regulation because they can—and do—cause widespread damage to our financial system. Almost everyone takes it for granted that regulation of some sort [...]
23Oct2009 | Warren C. Gibson | 0 comments | ContinuedThe “I Hate the Poor” Act of 2009
So I was shaving the other day, and the man on the morning talk radio show was on a roll. Cash for Clunkers was being temporarily shut down, or so declared the PR flack in the Department of Waste that administers the program, and Talk Show Guy thought this taught great lessons. “This was a good program! [...]
23Oct2009 | Christopher Westley | 4 comments | ContinuedGovernment Motors
Government Motors
by Michael Heberling
Michael Heberling (mheber01@baker.edu) is president of the Baker College Center for Graduate Studies in Flint, Michigan.
If Washington owns it, it just can’t keep its hands off.
—Senator Lamar Alexander
Twenty-five years ago President Reagan told auto workers in Orion, Michigan, “You’ve demonstrated when the chips are down, what people can do working together freely, [...]
Health Care’s Muddled Incentives
On the topic of health care, what empirical observations are reliable? Unfortunately, many “facts” come freighted with a great deal of ideological baggage. Those skeptical of markets, who favor a large role for government in health care, tend to emphasize statistics that disparage the American healthcare system. For supporters of markets, it is tempting to try to [...]
23Oct2009 | Arnold Kling | 3 comments | ContinuedWhy the Government Fails to Maintain Anything
As the mad scramble to pass President Obama’s stimulus bill reminded us, politicians love to start new government programs. They gain things they can brag about during their reelection campaigns. But there’s little to be gained by maintaining programs somebody else started. No surprise, then, that in budget battles, maintenance tends to be under-funded.
Moreover, as [...]
How “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition
Any consideration of “intellectual property rights” must start from the understanding that such “rights” undermine genuine property rights and hence are illegitimate in terms of libertarian principle. Real, tangible property rights result from natural scarcity and follow as a matter of course from the attempt to maintain occupancy of physical property that cannot be possessed [...]
23Sep2009 | Kevin Carson | 7 comments | ContinuedIf You Really Love Volunteers, Mr. Obama . . .
Barack Obama gave volunteerism a big boost early this year, visiting service centers on Martin Luther King Day, greeting volunteers, and working alongside them. “Everybody’s got to be involved,” he said. “If we’re waiting for somebody else to do something, it never gets done. We’re going to have to take responsibility, all of us.”
These are [...]
Health Care: A Future Free-Market Alternative
I visit a new doctor because of complaints I’ve been having. The primary-care doctor begins his first visit with me by explaining his payment system. I need to put down a retainer based on his assessment of the time it will take him to deal with my problem, which he’ll inform me of at the [...]
23Sep2009 | Ross Levatter | 5 comments | ContinuedAmerica’s Debt Paranoia
The headlines are alarming. The New York Times panicked that Americans are “Running in Debt” and just a few years later warned that Americans were “Borrowing Trouble.” Business Week asked, “Is the Country Swamped with Debt?” and U.S. News and World Report worried that “Never Have So Many Owed So Much.” Harper’s even expressed fear [...]
23Sep2009 | Todd Zywicki | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Rise and Fall of Curaçao’s Offshore Financial Sector
A longer examination, with footnotes, of Curaçao’s rise and fall, “Change, Dependency, and Regime Plasticity in Offshore Financial Intermediation: The Saga of the Netherlands Antilles,” by Craig M. Boise and Andrew P. Morriss, is forthcoming in the Texas International Law Journal and is available on SSRN.
In the late 1970s virtually every major U.S. corporation had [...]
Human Action, 1949: A Dramatic Episode in Intellectual History
A great book, it has been remarked, is like a great castle. It can be viewed from many different angles, each offering a unique perspective. Viewing Ludwig von Mises’s monumental work from the vantage of 2009 permits one to see with great clarity one fascinating aspect of the book–the sheer drama of its emergence at [...]
19Aug2009 | Israel M. Kirzner | 3 comments | ContinuedHuman Action: The 60th Anniversary
We are celebrating the 60th anniversary of a great book, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, by a learned man and a clear thinker: the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. It presents Mises’s understanding–after long years of study and thought–of how the market economy functions. It is a major contribution to human knowledge.
Interventionist ideas dominated [...]
Human Action: The Treatise in Economics
“Next week we will discuss the master’s work.” So stated Dr. Hans Sennholz to close his graduate seminar during my junior year at Grove City College. I had owned a copy of Human Action since my freshman year, but the book was too daunting for me to really study it. I preferred to read Henry [...]
19Aug2009 | Peter J. Boettke | 0 comments | Continued-
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Book Reviews
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Montessori, Dewey and Capitalism: Educational Theory for a Free Market In Education
By Jerry Kirkpatrick
