The Free Market 26, no. 2 (February 2005)

It is a sign of the times when the Chinese government, which was just granted market economy status by debt-laden Argentina, takes America to task over its gaping budget and trade deficits.

When interviewed by the Financial Times, published Nov. 22, Li Ruogu, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, admonished Washington not to blame outsiders for its disorderly accounts, but instead put its own house in order. “The problem is that they spend too much and save too little,” he says.

The Free Market 26, no. 2 (February 2005)

John Kenneth Galbraith, that insufferable puritan, wrote an odd book in 1958 called The Affluent Society, and it had a huge influence on several generations of anti-market activists. The burden of the book was to brazenly shift the terms of the debate over socialism and capitalism.

The Free Market 26, no. 2 (February 2005)

Mises was a towering figure, representing uncompromising intellectual integrity, the courageous pursuit of ideas regardless of the crop of unpopularity which he well knew he would reap. His scholarship was extraordinary; his wisdom legendary; the profundity of his insights into social processes has probably never been surpassed.

The Free Market 26, no. 3 (March 2005)

When Murray N. Rothbard (born 1926) died ten years ago, on January 7, 1995, he merited a headlined obituary in the New York Times, and many other tributes in that first sad and shocking week. Later a book appeared, and also special issues of journals and tributes of every sort. His memorial service in New York brought together people who had their lives and minds touched by his brilliance and generosity over the last half-century.

The Free Market 26, no. 3 (March 2005)

I didn’t think anyone would dare to apply Bastiat’s Broken Window fallacy to the human tragedy that played itself out along the rim of the Indian Ocean, but sadly, faith in economic fallacies is even more common than deadly tsunamis.

The Free Market 26, no. 3 (March 2005)

In the ten years between 1994 and 2004, a dramatic turn took place within the Republican Party. The themes of the 1994 election weren’t just about cutting government, though that was the central campaign promise of that generation of elected officials sent to Washington. The core was more revolutionary than that: it was a dogged commitment to full freedom philosophy forged in opposition to all the works of the central state.

The Free Market 26, no. 4 (April 2005)

For those who thought that the Microsoft antitrust nonsense was over, think again.

In March of 2004 Microsoft was fined a record $648 million by the European Commission for exercising its (alleged) monopoly power in the operating systems market. The most important element of that alleged monopoly power was Microsoft’s free inclusion of its program, Media Player, in its XP operating system. The Commission asserted that bundling Microsoft’s Media

The Free Market 26, no. 4 (April 2005)

The concept of taxation well deserves its partnership with death. Death and taxes, you know. Two vultures. Both, to say the least, deadly.

Why do we let them shear us like sheep every spring? I’m talking about taxes and their incremental, inexorable growth. The analogy of the farmer’s son who hefts the newborn calf comes to mind. It’s so easy that first day. And every morning thereafter he walks to the barn and picks up that animal.

The Free Market 26, no. 4 (April 2005)

Has academia become so politicized that teaching good economics, and using politically sensitive illustrations, can lead to threats, fines, penalties, demotion and worse? It certainly seemed so in early February when Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a leading student of Murray Rothbard and senior fellow of the Mises Institute, received an egregious letter from the Provost of his university.

The Free Market 26, no. 4 (April 2005)

Our image of Svengali derives from a 1894 novel by George Du Maurier (Trilby) that tells of a hypnotist who exercised psychological power over a woman. Insofar as Svengali is in control, she can sing beautifully. But when he is not around, she is reduced to barely functioning at all. Svengali himself derives malicious enjoyment from making people humiliate themselves at his command.