Liberty Is Worth the Abuse

We get a lot of abuse, those of us who publicly defend private property rights and voluntary arrangements against the varied depredations of government. Having to constantly face such attacks is a substantial part of the cost of speaking out, and probably explains why more people don’t take the risk. For those who might be considering publicly taking up the cause of “life, liberty, and property,” I offer the following example to give you a taste of what you can expect.

The Driver: The Human Story Behind the Economic History

 

I had the distinct privilege of being the first person outside the Riggenbach household to hear this recording. All the praise of Garet Garrett’s novels had failed to convince me to read any of them. Listening to the audiobook was something I did for work, to check for errors before we went into production. I didn’t even take up the task with any pleasure, as there was a very narrow window for quality review and it meant that I had to spend my weekend doing something other than R&R.

Back alley organ transplants

How do you create back alley organ transplants? Simple, just prohibit the buying and selling of human organs and then go all over the world trying to stop the market from working. Government payment for organs and control over distribution is no answer and would no doubt cause economic and ethical problems of its own. The market solution is just that — let the market determine the market.

Here is my review of the Kaserman and Barnett book on the subject.

The Left Deals with Hayek, again

Somehow I think that I’ve read this review before in many other forms and venues and by many different authors. It is a “thoughtful” leftist reviewing Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, generally agreeing that, first, yes, full-blown socialism of the statist sort is crushing of liberty, but, hey, no one believes that stuff anymore. The left is thoughtful and wonderful now and believes not in despotism but democracy.

The Enemy Is Always the State

The web loves nothing more than a good brawl, so people often write me to ask me to respond to a critic of LRC or the Mises Institute. There’s certainly no shortage of them, and they come from the Left, the Right, and everything in between. My first thought on the request is that the archive speaks for itself, and a response would amount to little more than reprinting.

Beware the Moral Hazard Trivializers

The current financial crisis is the result of longstanding political interventionism. In what follows we argue that our monetary system creates incentives for irresponsible behavior (moral hazard) and is therefore an important cause of recurrent crises. Then we discuss two recent articles purporting to downplay the significance of this fact. The true cause of moral hazard in the financial sector is to be seen in monetary policy and especially in the current monetary system.