Private Property

Austrian economists should revel in the story of Ukara, a small, Tanzanian island in Lake Victoria. John Reader, in his astoundingly detailed and fascinating work, Africa: A Biography of the Continent (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), presents among a wealth of other information that should be of genuine interest to economic scholars a little over three pages (beginning at 255) of highly persuasive refutation of the statists' cry for central planning to protect against deadly "sprawl."

Garet Garrett wrote in 1932, "Mass delusions are not rare. They salt the human story." Indeed, mass delusions are no more apparent than in the realm of public policy and especially in the faith people have in their government to carry out functions designed to promote the public good. How else to describe the persistent belief that government is a good steward of resources of any kind?

The New Jersey court ruling on the Boy Scouts violates a core principle of freedom. (Commentary by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.)

Private subways-even though highly regulated, even though the fare was held to a nickel by government decree--fueled the expansion of the city. As lines were extended, neighborhoods and shopping centers grew around the stations. But by 1940, through rigorous regulation and through Communist labor unions that sabotaged private ownership, the subways were taken over by the city.

Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief. And yet, the idea of a collective security is a myth that provides no justification for the modern state.

After hundreds of years of attacks on Christmas, economists have finally gotten into the act. Yale University's Joel Waldfogel, writing in the American Economic Review, condemns what he calls "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas." Once you cut through the calculus and graphs, his conclusion is clear: though Christmas generates a $50 billion gift-giving industry, a tenth to a third of that is sheer loss. Why? Because the recipient doesn't always get what he wants. Given the chance, the recipient would have purchased something else.

Shannon Faulkner's two-and-a-half year fight to become the first woman in The Citadel's corps of cadets went out with an embarrassing whimper. She couldn't handle the physical and psychological demands of Hell Week, landed in the infirmary, and dropped out. 

There are many curious aspects to the latest flag fracas. There is the absurdity of the proposed change in our basic constitutional framework by treating such minor specifics as a flag law. There is the proposal to outlaw "desecration" of the American flag. "Desecration" means "to divest of a sacred character or office." Is the American flag, battle emblem of the U.S. government, supposed to be "sacred"? Are we to make a religion of statolatry? What sort of grotesque religion is that?

Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses. The arts and crafts of the good old days had catered almost exclusively to the wants of the well-to-do. But the factories produced cheap goods for the many. All that the early factories turned out was designed to serve the masses, the same strata that worked in the factories. They served them either by supplying them directly, or indirectly by exporting, and providing for them foreign food and foreign raw materials.