Socialism of the Spirit

Obesity is approaching epidemic proportions in Canada, studies tell us. Predictably, some busybodies have started promoting the idea of a “fat tax” on snack foods such as chips and cookies, comparable to the “sin taxes” currently imposed on alcohol and tobacco. A surprising percentage of the population seems willing to entertain this idea. According to [...]

Raw Milk and the Sour State

Whether it is an expensive organic brand or simply carries a mega-chain store name, that milk has undergone pasteurization and homogenization. There is a growing subset of consumers who would prefer not to buy their milk this way. They want it unpasteurized, unhomogenized—in a word, “raw.”

Book Reviews – July 2008

• A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark Reviewed by Gene Callahan
• Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t by John Lott Reviewed by Robert P. Murphy
• Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval that Inspired America’s Founding Fathers by Michael Barone Reviewed by Martin Morse Wooster
• Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into a Nation of Children David Harsanyi Reviewed by George Leef

Banning Payday Loans Deprives Low-Income People of Options

In 2006 North Carolina joined a growing list of states that ban “payday lending.” Payday loans are small, short-term loans made to workers to provide them with cash until their next paychecks. This kind of borrowing is costly, reflecting both the substantial risk of nonpayment and high overhead costs of dealing with many little transactions. [...]

Big Government–Big Risk

In his Freeman column last June, “The End Run to Freedom,” economist Russell Roberts makes the following argument: As people get wealthier, they demand more security. Their demand for security leads many people to favor the welfare state or the nanny state. The welfare state refers to a government that subsidizes people who bear losses; [...]

Law and Good Intentions

Americans, not just classical-liberal ones, have an almost instinctual distrust of government. Our nation began in a revolt inspired partly by the “Intolerable Acts” of King George III and taxation without representation. The Declaration of Independence recited a lengthy list of grievances against the British government, summarized as “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, [...]

Of Lights and Liberty

Recently, while returning from lunch with a colleague, we observed a person blatantly running a red light. This event prompted my colleague to remark that he couldn’t understand why the government had not installed cameras to photograph the license plates of people who run red lights. I pondered his remark briefly, then told him that [...]

The Tyranny of the Proper

Jon Sanders is a research associate for the Pope Center for Higher Education Reform in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, a program of the John Locke Foundation. One strain of the vampire legend holds that the bloodsucking fiends can enter people’s homes only with their victims’ consent. Similarly, government can enter an area only if [...]