The Free Market 16, no. 8 (August 1998)

November and December mark the bicentennial of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves. Penned by Jefferson and Madison, the Resolves are peerless for their brief but masterful explication of the Constitution. Though there will be no parades or celebrations of the Resolves 200th birthday, the subjects—formerly citizens—of our great welfare-warfare state need to reacquaint themselves with the Resolves principles. Like no other document, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves mark the path to a return to constitutional government.

The Free Market 16, no. 8 (August 1998)

Janet Reno couldn’t get the hang of computers. By her own account, she couldn’t tell “what was on the hard drive, what was on the soft drive.” So she prefers “paper and pencil.”

Then she arrogantly sets herself up as Americas computer czar, claiming to know better than tens of millions of consumers about operating systems and software.

The Free Market 16, no. 9 (September 1998)

“Good corporate citizenship” is a familiar song that has topped the charts for far too long. Every two decades, it comes back with a slight variation, finding wild popularity. The new version arrived in the mid-eighties with suggestive lines about corporate behavior. The traditional corporate enterprise, it sings, should modify its goals not only because it affects other people, but because it touches everything: animal, vegetable, and mineral.

The Free Market 16, no. 9 (September 1998)

When Carol Browner, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, proposed new air quality standards last year, she claimed that thousands of Americans are being killed every year by tiny particles in the air with diameters of less than 2.5 microns. The EPA currently regulates airborne pollutants 10 microns in diameter, so Browner asked to have the agency’s powers expanded. Charcoal grills, lawnmowers, and other gasoline-powered equipment could be outlawed when they produce too much pollution.

The Free Market 16, no. 9 (September 1998)

Can government do a better job than private markets in any area of the economy? Consider: The tax-funded Human Genome Project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, has been the toast of the scientific elite for nearly a decade. It held out the promise of mapping of the entire structure of DNA, which in turn would lead to unparalleled medical breakthroughs and a new era for biotechnology.

The Free Market 16, no. ( 1998)

The Microsoft Corporation’s continuing difficulties with the Department of Justice, even after an appeals court ruled in the company’s favor, reveal the absurdity of attempting to apply 19th-century antitrust law to a 21st-century computer and telecommunications marketplace.

The Free Market 16, no. 10 (October 1998)

In 1944, Ludwig von Mises published one of his least-known masterworks: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Drawing on his prewar experience in Vienna, watching the rise of the National Socialists in Germany (the Nazis), who would eventually take over his own homeland, he set out to draw parallels between the Russian and German experience with socialism.

The Free Market 16, no. 10 (October 1998)

The world has just finished what, for Americans, is the curious spectacle of the Soccer World Cup. Every four years since the 1930s teams representing 32 countries have met (in a different venue each time) to decide who is best. Much of Europe, South America, and Africa come to a halt during the three weeks of Cup play.

The Free Market 16, no. 10 (October 1998)

The Free Market 16, no. 10 (October 1998)

In the midst of an economic boom, strange things were happening at General Motors. Huge swatches of its highly paid, coddled, unionized labor force were on strike. The result was catastrophic: GM plants all over North America shut down.