William Poole

William Poole is Distinguished Senior Scholar at the Mises Institute, a member of the Global Interdependence Center C

Why the Supreme Court Does What the Pentagon Wants

Imagine a county sheriff that took a suspected drug-law violator into custody more than 10 years ago. Since then, the man has been held in jail without being accorded a trial. The district attorney and the sheriff promise to give the man a trial sometime in the future but they’re just not sure when. Meanwhile the man sits in jail indefinitely just waiting for his trial to begin.

Canada Has Legalized Pot — And the US May Soon Bow to State Legalization

This October, recreational cannabis will become legal in Canada. Or, put more accurately, it will become legal again.

As in the United States, the prohibition of marijuana was a twentieth-century invention, but nevertheless remained an untouchable prohibition for several decades, and in spite of a 1972 recommendation from a federal commission that marijuana be de-criminalized.

Medical marijuana was finally legalized in 2001, although efforts at de-criminalizing recreational marijuana failed in 2003 and 2004.

No, Decriminalization of Marijuana Is not Better than Legalization

I occasionally see libertarians who advocate the decriminalization of marijuana and other illegal substances as being preferable to outright legalization. The logic is one to which we might be sympathetic: decriminalized substances cannot be taxed, while legalized substances are more easily subjected to sales or excise taxes, as well as a panoply of other regulations. Therefore, according to this argument, decriminalization would represent a freer market than the tax-and-regulate environment of legalized sales.

Help Us Give Books to Mises U Students

With your support, the Mises Institute can send the students home with a stack of Austrian classics such as America’s Great Depression and Where Keynes Went Wrong. After the week has destroyed every preconceived, state curriculum notion of how the world works, Mises U grads have another month before returning to their college classes. Fresh from the exhilaration of Mises U, our graduates can continue to dive into their Austrian education before sitting in classrooms where Democratic Socialists of America are the norm and universal basic income is the hottest policy trend.

The Authoritarian Left Wing of the Supreme Court

The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy has cranked-up DC political hysteria to 11. When we have grown adults weeping in their offices over the retirement of a judge, it is perhaps high time to question whether any group of nine individuals should ever have so much power over the political landscape. Ryan McMaken was making this very case in the aftermath of Antonin Scalia’s passing: