All Posts Tagged With: "charity"
From Good Samaritan to Robin Hood
The clamor from interventionists against inequality morphs into a clamor for a larger and larger state. This path leads to the loss of liberty and a distortion of both democracy and justice. It distorts democracy because, by attempting to solve inequality, it removes limits to power and expands the field of state action. It distorts justice because the only way to solve inequality politically is for the state to have the power to treat individuals unequally. Thus the struggle to eliminate inequality ends up destroying the most important form of equality for an open society: equality before the law.
10Jun2009 | Carlos Rodríguez Braun | 1 comment | ContinuedMenagerie Of Happy Men: The Ancient Incas and the Bureaucratic State
Examples of bureaucratic control over social life seem to be as old as recorded history, and they always have features that are universal in their perverse effects regardless of time or place. The French economist and historian Louis Baudin described some of these consequences in his classic work, A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru [...]
1Sep2007 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedOf Human Hypocrisy
A scene in W. Somerset Maugham’s beautiful novel Of Human Bondage captures the hypocrisy and pretense of much of what passes today for enlightened thought. Philip Carey, the novel’s protagonist, invites a dying friend, Cronshaw, to spend his final days at his small apartment. Cronshaw is a penniless poet. Leonard Upjohn is a self-satisfied writer [...]
1Jun2003 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedCapital Letters
Bike Helmets, Children, and Libertarian Philosophy
To the Editor:
In response to Ted Roberts’s article criticizing the admonishing of children to use bicycle helmets (“Take Your Bike Helmet to the Safety Museum,” February), I’d like to offer a couple of unscientific, anecdotal items from my own experience.
One is from a few decades ago, when I was a [...]
Beware the Ides of April (Plus Two)
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues.
April 15, two days after the Ides of April. A day of infamy that causes the sour-hearted taxpayer to shudder and wish a warp of time would wash over him and carry him to seventh-century Notaxylvania, an idyllic kingdom where the [...]
Why the War on Poverty Failed
James Payne is the author of Overcoming Welfare: Expecting More from the Poor and from Ourselves (Basic Books, 1998).
Well, it’s now official: the war on poverty was a costly, tragic mistake. Ordinary people have suspected that for decades, of course, but we had to wait for the New York Times to decide this news was [...]
Serving Others
Mr. Fairless is Chairman of the Executive Advisory Committee, United States Steel Corporation.
Ours would indeed be a sorry world if self-interest did not activate individuals to serve one another.
As far as I know, there are only two basic motivations that cause you and me and other people to serve our neighbors voluntarily and [...]
Security May Betray Us
Mr. Rutledge is the noted author, and owner of Hampton Plantation, McClellanville, South Carolina.
I live on a great river, and westward from my place, for some 60 miles, there is not a human habitation. Not far from where I live is a plantation, the owner of which is not satisfied with the size of [...]
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The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
