Free Market

In 1957, a businessman and radio personality named Robert LeFevre (1911-1986) founded a very special institution in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In his private studies, he had discovered the libertarian intellectual tradition. He noted the dire need for an institution that would educate people from all walks of life in the philosophy of freedom. He took it upon himself and named it the Freedom School, later changing the name to Rampart College before it shut down in 1968. Afterward, he carried on his work in South Carolina under the patronage of business giant Roger Milliken.

As the nation's equity markets crumbled, the question that inevitably arose was "When will stock prices stop falling?" And there was always some willing economist, journalist, politician, or other self-appointed pundit ready to take the bait.

Facing a crisis, their primary concern is political survival; to admit their culpability and liability would be committing political suicide. Therefore, they rant and rave, always pointing toward the producers of energy. It is they who heartlessly, scandalously, viciously, and immorally conspire to create energy shortages in order to reap exorbitant profits.

Back when I was an undergrad, I got an A in Economics 101, and a formal request for me to major in economics. The course was both easy and straightforward, and I was under the impression that a solid knowledge of how the economy worked was soon to be in my grasp.

Then I stumbled onto a copy of Henry Hazlitt's The Failure of the New Economics, and I got a real shock.

There are no good American history textbooks on the market. I've looked. We non-leftists have to settle for the least bad one we can find. A number of my friends told me a year ago that Tindall and Shi's America: A Narrative History was the least bad. So, I've used it this semester for my survey course covering the period from Reconstruction to the present.

It is sad that, even though Keynesian economics has been discredited time and again, we still hear the pundits declare that consumers cause recessions- and prosperity- simply by choosing to spend or not to spend. The "heroic consumer" who spends and spends in the face of adversity needs to be put to rest.

While some taxes are worse than others, there is no good tax. All taxes distort production, depress economic growth, and punish producers and consumers. It's also true that different kinds of taxes affect production and punish people in different ways.

Part of the reason seat belt laws and speed limits bother me is that they extend a tentacle of government into automobile safety issues-- yet another place it does not belong. Not only are such laws immoral, but they set a precedent for even more intrusive regulations. Next thing I know, the Food and Drink Police will be snatching candy bars from my hand and replacing them with rice cakes.

The problem of "payola" has been much in the headlines recently. And yet, little has been done to isolate and unravel the complex legal, moral, and economic issues involved.

Next to government debt in terms of liquidity is the swollen market for residential mortgages. As author Charles Morris observed in his book, Money, Greed, and Risk, "Measured by volume, the second most important American financial instrument over the past half century, by a wide margin, has been the lowly residential mortgage.