I made a small note in a previous article about how we shouldn’t worry about technology that displaces human workers:

It has been nearly two decades since progressive historian Michael A. Bellesiles published Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, his attempt to discredit the 2nd Amendment right to gun ownership. Bellesiles maintained that during the colonial period of American history, firearms were rare and it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that “gun culture” became prevalent in American culture.

[Adapted from a Liberty Matters online discussion at the Online Library of Liberty.] 

Last month, Kansas ended a five-year long experiment, whereby it lowered state income taxes with the expectation that it would boost economic growth in the state. As is widely acknowledged, Kansas’ low tax experiment was a failure. However, it was also a success. Few people know how to interpret the results, however, because few people use the correct economic framework to assess this experiment.

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics, or medicine—the special pleading of selfish interests.

“Switzerland will have the last word,” wrote Victor Hugo in the late 19th century. “It possesses one of the most perfect forms of government in the world.” A contemporary of his, Frederick Kuenzli, a scholar of the Swiss Army, boasted: “No purer type of Republican ideals, no more fixed and devoted adherence to those ideals can be found in all the world than in Switzerland.”