All Posts Tagged With: "privilege"

Elizabeth Warren’s Non Sequitur

Boiled down, Warren’s argument is that since everyone has paid taxes to provide services without which wealthy people couldn’t have made their money, they should pay more. How does that follow?

23Sep2011 | Sheldon Richman | 82 comments | Continued

How Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market

Advocates of free-market capitalism commonly believe in the legitimacy of intellectual property (IP) because IP rights are thought to be important to a system of private property. But are they? There are good reasons to think that IP is not actually property—that it is actually antithetical to a private-property, free-market order. By intellectual property, I [...]

25May2011 | N. Stephan Kinsella | 56 comments | Continued

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a New Life

I like to compare the rival coalitions of organized capital represented by the major parties to two farmers. One farmer thinks it’s more profitable in the long run to work his livestock in moderation and feed them well. The other figures he’ll come out ahead by just working them to death and replacing them. I [...]

25May2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 7 comments | Continued

What Economic Freedom Indexes Leave Out

In a syndicated column last October, television journalist John Stossel lamented the downgrading from sixth to eighth place—“behind Canada!”—of the United States on the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. The Index is based on several metrics, including freedom of movement of capital, the degree of business regulation, and levels of taxes and [...]

24Feb2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 6 comments | Continued

A Feature, Not a Bug

One of the purposes of the State is to serve the interests of those with the most to spend and the most to gain from intervention.

20Jan2011 | Steven Horwitz | 25 comments | Continued

Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media . . .

In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith explained the three forces at work against the establishment and maintenance of economic freedom. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith warned of the arrogance and danger of what he called “the man of system,” or the social engineer, who presumes to redesign man and society [...]

6Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued

Corruption in Government? Shocking!

It’s funny how the people who push hardest for government intervention in more and more areas are the first to gripe that everything has become politicized. What were they expecting? Did they forget that government is a political institution? Paul Krugman and Chris Matthews, among other Progressives, are apoplectic because two senators of the minority [...]

20Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | Continued

Let’s Take the “Crony” Out of “Crony Capitalism”

When Judge Richard Posner, the prolific conservative intellectual, released his book A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent Into Depression last year, you might have thought the final verdict was in: Capitalism caused the economic downturn and high unemployment. That this verdict was pronounced by someone like Posner, who is associated [...]

24Mar2010 | John Stossel | 4 comments | Continued

Rule of Law versus Legislative Orders

Webster’s dictionary defines law as all the rules of conduct established and enforced by the authority, legislation, or custom of a given community or group. Why are there laws in the first place? The most apparent answer is, were there not a particular law, some people would not conduct themselves according to the law in [...]

23Oct2009 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | Continued

The Real Meaning of Privilege

“They live in an expensive mansion, fly first-class to foreign countries, and eat at the finest restaurants. They send their kids to private schools. They’re so privileged.” How often have you heard some variant of the lines above? I’d bet it’s a lot. Yet, typically, the word “privileged” is inaccurate. We certainly all know or [...]

23Sep2009 | David R. Henderson | 11 comments | Continued

Hands Off “Windfall” Profits

You don’t have to like the oil companies to reject the windfall-profits tax. All you have to know is that if you tax something, you’ll get less of it. No one can seriously dispute this piece of common sense. That leaves the strong suspicion that the motive for the tax is punitive: those companies are [...]

1Jul2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

Mises on Copyrights

The widespread reproduction and “sharing” of copyrighted music on the Internet led a friend to ask me what Ludwig von Mises would have thought about the situation. The more I pondered the question, the more I concluded that Mises would have considered this just another case where copyright law must play catch-up with new technology. [...]

1Jun2004 | Bettina Bien Greaves | 2 comments | Continued

Socialized Medicine Is the Problem

Recently, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien changed his mind about his country’s system of socialized medicine. After long and hard opposition, he now favors a two-tier health system, including user fees and private provision. This makes it all the more important to take another look, not just at the surface of state-run medical care, but [...]

1Dec2001 | Walter Block | 6 comments | Continued

Individual and Society: Irreconcilable Enemies?

Contributing editor Tibor Machan is a professor at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. Do individual rights clash with the interests and “rights” of communities? Some say that they do, at least sometimes. And some think they clash quite often. But an individual “right” that can be abrogated at will whenever [...]

1Oct2001 | Tibor R. Machan | 1 comment | Continued

An Aristocracy of Pull?

There are two ways by which rewards can be allocated in a society: status or achievement. Although no society relies solely on one way, the weight placed on one side or the other has profound consequences not only for economic growth, but for politics as well. Societies that place too much emphasis on status will [...]

1Aug2001 | Thomas M. Wilson | 5 comments | Continued

Capitalists Should Love the Estate Tax?

Writing in the February 15 issue of online magazine Salon, philosophy professor Sam Fleischacker says that he found it “inspiring” that George Soros, Bill Gates Sr., Warren Buffett, and several other wealthy people had spoken out in favor of retaining the estate tax. Fleischacker argues that it is precisely defenders of capitalism who should “fervently [...]

1Jul2001 | Aeon J. Skoble | 3 comments | Continued

Whole Language: Emancipatory Pedagogy or Socialist Nonsense?

Patrick Groff is professor of education emeritus at San Diego State University. The “whole language” method of reading instruction is a highly popular, yet experimentally discredited teaching innovation. The educational principle that governs it falsely states that students best learn to read in the same informal, natural manner they previously learned to speak as preschoolers. [...]

1Jul2000 | Patrick Groff | 1 comment | Continued
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