While Sechrest's book will be an asset for further research, his untimely death has not only cost many of us a dear friend but will also deprive the continuing debate of his sound scholarship, open mind, and willingness to actively engage in the search for truth.
You have only a few years to live and cannot hope to remake society in so short a time. Nobody now living will see a free society in America. But, in fighting for it, one can have a lot of fun. Consider the effort as a legacy to your great-grandchildren.
The 17th-century Dutch Protestant Hugo Grotius, deeply influenced by the late Spanish Scholastics, developed a theory of natural laws that he boldly declared was truly independent of the question of whether God had created them.
It is certainly true that our age is full of conflicts which generate war.
Diminished preparedness for severe weather events should surprise nobody. The airport industry is one of the most regulated and intervened-in sectors worldwide, and it is not uncommon for governments to own the airports outright, leasing or licensing the facilities out to favored operators.
Our health and living standards have virtually nothing to do with charity and virtually everything to do with entrepreneurs solving problems. Had we depended on only alms and goodwill to elevate our living standards, we would still be squatting in mud huts.
Prohibition and the New Deal are alike in their professed intention. Both assumed the guise of disinterested benevolence towards the body politic. We are judged incapable of setting up an adequate social defense against vicious rum-sellers and malefactors of great wealth.
I want to focus on how these times relate to history and how we can change the future by applying the economic way of thinking. I am therefore going to draw your attention to four different themes.
The first self-conscious school of economic thought developed in France shortly after the publication of Cantillon’s Essai.
