Big Government

Consumers are eating shrimp like never before, writes Don Mathews, so why is the industry so unhappy?

The root of the pension problem, writes Carl Horowitz, is the inherent unsoundness of State-granted guarantees to firms (and unions) against market failure.

There are many reasons for the decline of the family, lifestyle choice among them, writes Per Henrik Hansen.

Is the state’s power of eminent domain necessary in a free society? Walter Block and Richard Epstein debate the topic.

Whether or not he had committed any crimes (and, apparently, he had not), Quattrone had plenty about which to be nervous, write Bill Anderson and Candice Jackson.

Given the reality that markets are self-regulating, how did the US economy (not to mention economies of other nations) become a morass of hundreds of thousands of state, local, and federal regulations that govern things to the minutest detail? Furthermore, why have we not seen a revolt of business owners and consumers alike, who ultimately pay the price for the modern regulatory state? The answer is both simple— and complex.

Print publications are subject to no FCC-style censor, writes Gardner Goldsmith, and the market has managed itself quite well.

The government has no business stockpiling anything, including oil. But when three socialist amigos like Senators Charles Schumer of New York, Barbara Boxer of California and Harry Reid of Nevada all urged the Bush administration recently to help ease gasoline prices by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), you know what's up. These three are all facing the voters come November, and they know from their many years in politics that nothing agitates the boobeoisie and engenders conspiracy theories like high gas prices.

Lew Rockwell agrees with Richard Clarke: "Your government failed you"--in many more ways than he is willing to admit.

Recorded at Mises University 2001.