All Posts Tagged With: "big business"
The Twisted Tree of Progressivism
Sorting out the Progressive movement and its constituent ideologies can be difficult in that the very term “progressive” is burdened with contested meanings. Rather than work along lines agreeable to presently out-of-office politicians hoping to regain power by denouncing long-dead Progressives, we begin with some deep background. One portent of Progressivism is found in the [...]
30Nov2011 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 24 comments | ContinuedThe Many Monopolies
We libertarians defend economic freedom, not big business. We advocate free markets, not the corporate economy. And what would freed markets look like? Nothing like the controlled markets we have today. But how often do we hear mass unemployment, financial crisis, ecological catastrophe, and the economic status quo attributed to the voraciousness of “unfettered free [...]
24Aug2011 | Charles Johnson | 19 comments | ContinuedThe Modern Union versus Workers’ Rights
The raging controversy in Wisconsin over eliminating collective bargaining “rights” for government employees cast a bright and harsh light on public-sector unions. Some commentators have distinguished public-sector unions from private-sector unions, but the vested interests of the two are much the same. Both are expressions of what might be called “the modern union,” which came [...]
22Jun2011 | Wendy McElroy | 4 comments | ContinuedGood Economists, Bad Economists, and Walmart
Good economists are seldom popular with the political class. This is not unique to democratic systems; dictators like good economists even less. Why? As a rule, politics doesn’t educate. It obfuscates, pontificates, and prevaricates. It often seeks to advance the interests of the few at the expense of the many. It is a playground for [...]
29Jun2010 | Lawrence W. Reed | 13 comments | ContinuedBig Business Goes Big for Health Care Reform
“What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand,” Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times a few months ago. That manipulation should disturb us. But contrary to Rich, it is not the work of “corporatists” who have [...]
18Nov2009 | John Stossel | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Rise of Big Business and the Growth of Government
Most people learn about the relation between the rise of big business and the growth of government in the form of what amounts to a morality play. In the most widely disseminated version, presented in nearly every American history textbook, the emergence of big business (playing the role of the devil) is said to have [...]
19Aug2009 | Robert Higgs | 28 comments | ContinuedWhat Happened to Market Discipline?
During the late presidential campaign Barack Obama said, “[Today’s economic problems are] a stark reminder of the failures of . . . an economic philosophy that sees any regulation at all as unwise and unnecessary.” What? Does that mean that until last fall the Bush administration embraced the free market? Nonsense. Governments at all levels [...]
20Jan2009 | John Stossel | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Subsidy of History
A considerable number of libertarian commentators have remarked on the sheer scale of subsidies and protections to big business, on their structural importance to the existing form of corporate capitalism, and on the close intermeshing of corporate and state interests in the present state capitalist economy. We pay less attention, however, to the role of [...]
1Jun2008 | Kevin A. Carson | 16 comments | ContinuedHow Land-Use Planning Benefits Big Business Over Small
It is widely recognized that central-government attempts to completely plan economies (that is, totally eliminate private property rights) are destined to fail. But even lower levels of government can have debilitating impacts on an economy by undermining private property rights through planning and regulation. Indeed, as urban-policy analyst Sam Staley explains, the implications of the [...]
1May2008 | Bruce L. Benson | 2 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – June 2007
- Hitlers Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State
by Goetz Aly Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
- The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money
by Timothy P. Carney Reviewed by Sheldon Richman
- Income and Wealth
by Alan Reynolds Reviewed by George C. Leef
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle What We Have Learned; How to Fix It
by Henry N. Butler and Larry E. Ribstein Reviewed by Barbara Hunter
- The Joy of SOX: Why Sarbanes-Oxley and Service-Oriented Architecture May Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You
by Hugh Taylor Reviewed by Barbara Hunter
Inequality Matters
In the controversy raging over whether income inequality in America is growing a lot or a little, some pro-market people say it doesn’t much matter. This attitude is unjustified, not to mention harmful to the cause of individual freedom because it misses the bigger picture. How could growing economic inequality not matter? I’d understand that [...]
1May2007 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Stock Market Is a Swindle?
Jude Blanchette is a freelance writer living in China. Michael Kinsley, founding editor of the online magazine Slate, columnist for the Washington Post, and American editor of the Guardian (UK), is a smart guy. His columns are often witty and incisive. Even where Kinsley is wrong (and he often is) he provides the reader a [...]
1Apr2007 | Jude Blanchette | 0 comments | ContinuedWelfare for the Rich
Advocates of the free market—including those considered “right-wing” and “conservative”—believe it is wrong to violate property rights. Consequently, they oppose egalitarian measures to steal from the rich and give to the poor. Such “income redistribution” represents naked theft and epitomizes the Founding Fathers’ fears of unfettered democracy. At the same time, champions of laissez faire [...]
1Apr2007 | Robert P. Murphy | 10 comments | ContinuedThe Jewel of Consistency
The acid test is that a man live by the principles he professes to believe.
1Jun2006 | Fred DeArmond | 0 comments | ContinuedFull Context
In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith famously wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” It may seem strange that history’s best-known advocate of the free market would cast such aspersions [...]
1Apr2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Big We Really Need to Beware
Wayne Dunn (WayDunn@aol.com) is a freelance writer living in Tennessee. It’s funny how an innocent little word like “big” can be used to help conjure up images of corruption. Just think of what’s usually meant by “big oil,” “big drug companies,” and “big corporations.” But are big businesses inherently bad, as some would like us [...]
1Jul2004 | Wayne Dunn | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Perverse Popularity of Command and Control
Most government attempts to protect the environment involve imposing detailed regulations on how, and how much, pollution must be reduced. This command-and-control approach does reduce pollution, but as I explained last month, it does so at high cost.
1Sep2001 | Dwight R. Lee | 3 comments | Continued-
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