The Free Market 17, no. 5 (May 1999)

The Free Market 17, no. 5 (May 1999)

President Clinton’s pastor and spiritual advisor J. Philip Wogaman has shown great interest in economic theory and policy. A professor of Christian Social Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C., and pastor of the Foundry Methodist Church, his writings on economic systems display a relentless moral condemnation of the market economy. But when it comes to judging the errors of government planning, regulation, and politics in general, he urges an attitude of unremitting forgiveness.

The Free Market 17, no. 5 (May 1999)

The Free Market 17, no. 5 (May 1999)

Murray Rothbard once asked Ludwig von Mises at what point on the spectrum of statism can a country be designated as “socialist.” To his surprise, Mises said that there was, indeed, a clear-cut delineation: the stock market.

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

At the American Revolution, the founders clearly recognized the defects of representative government. Pamphleteer John Cartwright in 1776 derided “that poor consolatory word, representation, with the mere sound of which we have so long contented ourselves.” “Slavery by Parliament” was the phrase commonly used to denounce British legislative power grabs.

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

For the last two years, the federal government has attempted to construct a Consolidated Financial Statement of its financial status for the previous fiscal year. This statement is an audit of the financial status of 24 cabinet level departments and agencies and is an attempt to account for the government’s revenues, expenditures, and assets.

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.