A. Microeconomics

Chapter 7

Market vs. State: It Is the Overriding Distinction in Economics and Politics

Just as an important difference in everyday life is that between a bathroom and a kitchen, so, too, does a crucial distinction in political-economic philosophy exist between government and private contractual arrangements. But here is where the analogy breaks down.

Chapter 8

What Do Boxing and Business Schools Have in Common?: The Problem of Ratings

It is one thing for pinkos, commies, demopublicans, republicrats, lefties, neo-cons, etc., to denigrate this distinction. That is, indeed, entirely fitting and proper. If they didn’t do this, they could hardly be characterized as I have just done. However, it is quite another thing for “libertarians” to make this mistake. They ought to give up this pernicious doctrine, or at least have the decency to stop characterizing themselves as libertarians.

Chapter 9

The Motor Vehicle Bureau; Confronting It

Newly arrived in New Orleans from Arkansas, one of the first things I did after settling in was to attempt to register my automobile and get a Louisiana license plate (I can’t pass for a native with an out of town vehicle.)

I say “attempt” advisedly, because this quest, as it turned out, was quite a struggle.

Chapter 10

Want To Help the Poor and Oppressed? Encourage Laissez-Faire Capitalism, You Bleeding-Heart Liberal, You

Open Letter to the International Justice Mission

Dear Mr. Haugen:

I attended your speech at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada; I wanted to comment at that time, but the Q&A period was too limited. So I thought I would share my thoughts with you in this format.

Chapter 11

Want To Cure Poverty? Get the Government Out of the Market

Louisiana Governor Blanco is now holding hearings on the problem of poverty. Since she is a mainstream politician, she will likely arrive at the wrong answers for its cause and adopt fascistic solutions for its cure. Worse, this initiative will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more and thus exacerbate the very poverty she is supposedly fighting.

Chapter 12

Airport Insecurity

Last week, I took an airplane from Vancouver to Atlanta, to give some lectures at the Mises Institute. I took a cab to the airport, since I would be away from my summer home for over two weeks, and this would be cheaper than parking the car at the airport for all that time. I had in my possession a letter, with a Canadian stamp on it, that I really wanted to get out into the socialist mail system.

B. Macroeconomics

Chapter 13

Keep the Penny, Toss the Fed: On the Criminals Who Killed This Once-Useful Coin

For some people, benighted souls, the passing of the copper-colored penny coin is long overdue. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” they might say. After all, this bit of metal hardly buys anything, nowadays. Ubiquitous on the counters of shops around the country are cups holding pennies, there for the use of customers in order to help them make change.

Chapter 14

Private Enterprise and the Fed; What Should Be the Relationship?

Several years ago I attended a meeting of the Association of Private Enterprise Educators (APEE).1 This group was initially started by a group of holders of free enterprise chairs at various universities (I suppose I now qualify under that rubric) but memb

C. Environmental Economics

Chapter 15

Heroic Hunt Farms

Quick, why do you call left-wing environmentalists watermelons? Because while they are green on the outside, they are also red on the inside.

No better illustration of this political mindset can be seen in the controversy involving hunt farms in Canada. In these game ranches — now legal only in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, they have just been banned in neighboring Montana — fees are charged to customers who shoot deer, elk, and sometimes other such trophy animals.

Chapter 16

Me and Hurricane Ivan: Thanks A Lot, Government

I first became personally aware of Hurricane Ivan on Monday, September 13, 2004. There were newscasts telling of the havoc it had played, and the lives lost in the Caribbean a few days before, but it didn’t dawn upon me until this date that it might visit New Orleans, my home of some three years.