Thomas Sowell is one of the most influential and insightful voices in American academia. At 95, he wrote a new website: Facts Against Rhetoric. His work is known for its willingness to challenge even the most set notions with objectivity and command of empirical evidence.
instruments capable of restraining political power. Particularly following the Renaissance and Enlightenment, written constitutions began to be celebrated by limited government political theorists as rational devices designed to bind rulers, limit coercion, and protect liberty through clearly-enumerated rules.
Redistribution lies at the heart of the problems currently plaguing Western societies and all those who emulate them. A hint comes from the prefix“re-” in this word, which implies a second distribution taking place on top of a previous one. Implicit is the idea that this second distribution takes place because the first one is considered flawed. Yet, this original distribution is the natural process of the free market, while the second distribution—or redistribution—is artificially organized by the state.
In my article “Carl Menger’s Overlooked Vital Evolutionary Insights,” I tried to summarize and bring attention to founder of the Austrian School of economics Carl Menger’s “vital evolutionary insights” regarding the evolved, non-human-designed emergence of social institutions like “law, of language, of the origin of markets, the origin of communities
[Reinterpreting Libertarianism: New Directions in Libertarian Studies edited by Lukasz Dominiak, Igor Wysocki, Stanislaw Wotowicz, and Dawid Megger. (Routledge, 2026; x+ 245 pp.)]
In 1892, Carl Menger wrote On the Origins of Money—the original basis of Austrian monetary theory. This essential work lays out a theory as to how monies emerged through voluntary human action and exchanges on a free market. Menger also critiqued other monetary theories—money from social compact or civil edict—as unhistorical.
