Big Government

Presented at the Mises Institute on 18 November 2003. Includes a Question and Answer session.

A common accusation against the Mises Institute is that it is obsessed with tracing social and economic problems to the state, and, in doing so, it oversimplifies the world.

Our public institutions routinely celebrate politicians as heroes and parade them before school children as examples of great community leaders. Tibor Machan doubts the underlying assumption. Members of a city council, especially in major cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, are as a rule undeserving of special respect. They do not hold honorable professions.

The latest developments are part of a long list of transgressions perpetrated by the government in its zeal to ruin Martha Stewart. The reason why ImClone shares were set to fall in the first place was due to an incompetent Food and Drug Association's decision to reject the firm's request to market a highly anticipated cancer drug—a decision it would hypocritically reverse.

England's undergraduate institutions are rife with outdated and understaffed facilities, crumbling infrastructure, and poorly compensated instructors, all consequences of deferred investment prompted by the need to meet the current expenses of accommodating the influx of new degree-takers. Grant Nülle says that this the fate of all socialist institutions. Blair's proposed reform fall far short of what is necessary.

The Republicans have done it again. With their new Medicare bill, they’ve made government even bigger.

The Free Market 24, no. ( 2004)

What is a loophole? For the criminal mind, writes Lew Rockwell, the lock on your door, the combination code on your safe, and the weapon your keep for protection are all loopholes you use to escape the work he wants to do. If he had his way, all these loopholes that permit you to maintain privacy and security would be closed forthwith. The result for him would be vastly more revenue.

In 2003, one in 35 million U.S. cattle were confirmed to have mad cow disease. Infected cattle comprised three millionths of one percent of all cattle. So why the mad cow scare? As Christopher Westley tells us, it reflects an implicit consensus among the body politic that the federal overseers of the U.S. beef industry are not capable of stopping the spread of mad cow once the slightest hint of the disease shows itself on U.S. soil.

The government sets price its flu shot at zero and then wonders how to account for shortages. That's just the beginning of the long history of government errors concerning the flu, writes William Anderson. In the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, an estimated 500,000 Americans died of Spanish Influenza. The outbreak coincided with the last days and the immediate post-armistice days of World War I, with government actions guaranteeing that the flu would spread rapidly.