All Posts Tagged With: "private property rights"
The A Word
I confess to having deep sympathies for anarchism. I hold open the possibility and the hope that a prosperous and peaceful society can flourish without the state. Unfortunately, the word “anarchy” has an offensive connotation. Anarchy is commonly understood to mean “lawlessness.” And lawlessness truly is offensive. A lawless society has no rules to govern [...]
1Jul2001 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 5 comments | ContinuedCapitalism and the Zero
John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, a state policy think tank in North Carolina, and author of The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good (Free Press). In traditional discussions of the rise of free-market capitalism, great attention is paid to changes in institutions, technologies, and ideologies. We read the great philosophers [...]
1Dec2000 | John Hood | 2 comments | ContinuedGreed Versus Compassion
What’s the noblest of human motivations? Some might be tempted to answer: charity, love of one’s neighbor, or, in modern, politically correct language, giving something back or feeling another’s pain. In my book, these are indeed noble motivations, but they pale in comparison to a much more potent motivation for human action.
1Oct2000 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | ContinuedFreedom of Association
Imagine being awakened one morning by a loud knocking on your door. You stumble downstairs and find your neighbor standing before you with a friendly smile across his face and a frightening rifle across his shoulder. Behind him you see your yard surrounded by a newly built barbed-wire fence. “Hi!” he says. “You’re gonna love [...]
1Aug2000 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | ContinuedRunning Out of Agricultural Land
Fear that we are running out of important resources is perpetual. Oil is a favorite thing to worry about; landfill space is another, and trees yet another. I could continue listing things (coal, copper, iron ore, even tin) that people have worried would soon be exhausted, and I plan to discuss the persistent fear of resource exhaustion in future columns. In most cases the fear is baseless—fueled by organized interests hoping to capture advantages by scaring the public, by sloppy journalism, and by a general lack of basic economic understanding.
1Jul2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 3 comments | ContinuedWho May Harm Whom?
Smoking has been one of the hot controversies of our time. Many people find tobacco smoke annoying, smelly, and just plain dirty and unpleasant. Some smokers themselves agree. ut today’s smoking restrictions, not to mention the attack on smokers and extortion of tobacco companies, could not have been engineered simply on the grounds that tobacco smoke is unpleasant.
1Apr2000 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedTwo Indispensable Lessons
The 1900s are now history. I say “1900s” rather than “twentieth century” to avoid irritating those sticklers for precision who note that the final day of the twentieth century is December 31, 2000, and not December 31, 1999. I agree, too, with sticklers of another sort who point out that, because time measurement is a [...]
1Jan2000 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedUnfettered Powerful Extremes
Over the years, intelligent and well-meaning opponents of private property and free markets have offered thoughtful and articulate arguments in support of government intervention. None of these arguments have withstood close scrutiny, but at least they were offered in the spirit of honest debate. Such arguments, even though deeply flawed, never infuriate me. Not so [...]
1Dec1999 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedPrinciples for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good
Law and economics were once openly tied, as witness the title of John Stuart Mill’s 1848 work, Principles of Political Economy. Or consider that Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek both held doctorates from the University of Vienna not in economics but in jurisprudence. Economics came into its own as a “pure” science, however, [...]
1Nov1999 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedConservation and Speculation
I often ask my students, “How many of you are in favor of conservation?” Except for those who are asleep, every hand goes up. I then ask, “How many of you are in favor of speculators?” and almost no one raises his hand. The students see conservation as a noble activity that prevents people from [...]
1Aug1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedIn the Absence of Private Property Rights
We commonly benefit from things we neither understand nor appreciate. Obviously there are advantages in benefiting from a wide range of things without having to give them much thought. But the danger is that such neglect can often cause us great harm. Good health is an example. For most people, good health is easy to [...]
1Jul1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedChina’s Spontaneous Order
James Dorn is vice president for academic affairs at the Cato Institute and professor of economics at Towson University. He is the editor of China in the New Millennium: Market Reforms and Social Development (Cato Institute, 1998). A shorter version of this article appeared in the Journal of Commerce. This year marks the 50th anniversary [...]
1Apr1999 | James A. Dorn | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Commons: Tragedy or Triumph?
In the summer I watch ruby-throated hummingbirds fly and hover near a feeder that my wife, Dot, carefully fills with nectar and hangs in view of our kitchen window. The store-bought nectar is colored red, since people think that hummingbirds find that color attractive. Business around the feeder picks up following rains that wash away [...]
1Apr1999 | Bruce Yandle | 9 comments | ContinuedThe Savings Crisis
John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, a non-profit think tank based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the author of The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good (The Free Press). It’s a constant refrain among politicians and the news media: America has a low savings rate. This, it is said, has dire [...]
1Mar1999 | John Hood | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Mainspring of Human Progress
William Peterson, an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation, is the Distinguished Lundy Professor Emeritus of business philosophy at Campbell University in North Carolina. “There can be no progress except through the more effective use of our individual energies.” The emblazonment of this quotation on the front cover of the new edition of Henry Grady [...]
1Jun1998 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedDemocracy Would Doom Hong Kong
John Wenders teaches economics at the University of Idaho. There is an important lesson to be learned from the Hong Kong economic miracle, the destiny of which is now in the hands of China. Too bad most commentators have missed it completely. The lesson is simple. This small patch of rocky land, devastated by war [...]
1Jan1998 | John T. Wenders | 0 comments | ContinuedTV Taxes
Christmas arrived early for TV broadcasters this year. Way back in March the federal government played Santa Claus. Over a four-day period, from March 31 to April 3, Washington gave away the proverbial store to the nation’s over-the-air television broadcasters. A major step by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—taken per a Democratic White House and [...]
1Nov1997 | Raymond J. Keating | 2 comments | Continued-
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