The GDP (gross domestic product) statistic portrays a view that the key driving factor of economic growth is not the production of wealth but rather its consumption. Instead, it is a calculation of the value of final goods and services produced during a particular time interval, usually a quarter or a year. Since consumer outlays are the largest part of the overall demand, it is held by many commentators that consumer spending is the key driver of economic growth.

Sweden’s rent control is widely touted by many who don’t understand economics as a model for how a property market should work. Young people in Ireland, for example, like to point to Sweden as a nirvana where rent control ensures easy availability of affordable and high-quality rental stock. 

Michael Munger, a political scientist and economist who teaches at Duke University, argues in his excellent essay “Libertarianism and Public Choice,” included in The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism, that public choice offers a more persuasive defense of free-market libertarianism than natural rights. In this week’s article, I’m going to look at some of his arguments.

Indian tribe sovereignty has long been a much neglected, yet important, tool in decentralizing and limiting government power in the United States. Since the early nineteenth century, it has been recognized by US courts and policy makers that—at least in theory—US governments have very limited jurisdiction within tribal lands beyond what is granted by treaties between the US and each individual tribe. Thus, in theory, tribal lands within the US function to limit the territorial sovereignty of both the US government and the state governments. 

If anyone doubts that human trafficking is a problem, the events of the last couple weeks here in south Texas should disabuse them of the notion. By now we know of the fifty-three migrants who lost their lives in a boiling-hot 18-wheeler here in San Antonio.

This article is the second in a two-part series. Check out part 1 here.