The Free Market 17, no. 6 (June 1999)

After the US government attacked Yugoslavia, the first act of the Republicans was to take tax cuts off the table (if they were ever really on it). This symbolic gesture underscores a point: when a war is on, the work of liberty is off. For this reason, everyone concerned about freedom must oppose war.

At the outset, Clinton gave reasons for his military intervention. A quick look showed them to be models of the state disinformation we’ve come to expect in wartime.

The Free Market 17, no. 6 (June 1999)

Nowadays every frontier of human achievement faces a regulatory barrier that must be crossed. Those regulatory barriers are often prompted by interest group fears based more in political theory than reality. In particular, biotechnology is one of the more contested and feared additions to man’s arsenal of control over his environment.

The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999)

Free markets may be productive, a common complaint runs, but they lead to unjust results. For instance, writing in The New Republic (March 29, 1999) Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago School of Law closes a book review this way:

The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999)

The internet provides a remarkable test case of the free market. What have we learned?

Business doesn’t need government to succeed. Independence is the trait that sums up the attitude of all successful web entrepreneurs. But this model of market success is not to be found in most textbooks of American history, where government is seen as the engine of economic growth and where businessmen are portrayed as helpless in the absence of the government’s helping hand.

The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999)

On the wall outside my office, the gift of Nelson White, is a framed piece of money: a 500 billion dinar note issued by the government of Yugoslavia. It was printed in 1993, when it would buy about a gallon of milk. And that was before the inflation really got bad. By January 1994, the rate would reach 313 million percent and this note became literally worthless.

The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999)

The international socialist movement, led by Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, is attempting to revive the disastrous policy of war socialism with which the current century began.

The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999)

According to the hoopla, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was created in 1995 as an instrument of global free trade. Instead, it is proving to be a vehicle for corruption, economic reprisals, and politicization of trade.

The agency’s true character was revealed when the city of Seattle, host of the November 1999 WTO Summit, was caught selling corporate sponsorships in exchange for access to high-level trade officials. The WTO is starting to resemble an economic version of the International Olympic Committee.

The Free Market 17, no. 8 (August 1999)

When Janet Yellen, Clinton’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, resigned her post, she said it was for purely personal reasons. But according to inside reports, the personal reasons included frustration at having to lie day-in and day-out. No matter what the economic data of the week, she was expected to give it a spin that would boost the president and smear his enemies.

The Free Market 17, no. 8 (August 1999)

I reside in Indian River County, Florida, where jury duty is mandated by statute, as in most states. This means that the courts in the county are authorized to “summon” specific individuals for service in civil and criminal proceedings as jurors. A failure to respond to the jury duty summons will be considered a “contempt of court,” and a fine not to exceed $100 can be imposed.

The Free Market 17, no. 9 (August 1999)

No New York City public institution better illustrates the rise and decline of the city than the subways. The subways were primarily built by private-sector entrepreneurs at the turn of the century.