Free Markets
Liberty versus Democracy
Madison stated the historic fact: in democracy there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. There is no protection for liberty. Hence it is, that democracies always destroy personal security (the Gestapo, the concentration camps) and the rights of property (what rights of property ownership are there in Europe, now?) and are as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.
Inching Toward Commercial Freedom
It is not only the regulation on retail price maintenance that is unconstitutional but the whole of the Sherman Antitrust Act…
The State Breeds Social Conflict
Frédéric Bastiat said long ago what still rings true today: "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
The Student Loan Fiasco: Made in D.C.
The solution to the crisis in higher education is to take the government out of the equation.
A Market for Criminal Skills
In the same way that a hacker can provide a good test against holes in program code, the crowbar kids at the rental place showed me something important: if you are worried about the security of your automobile, you need to do more than lock your car.
Economic Lessons Everywhere
The remains of the Roman Forum, Coliseum, and the palaces of Palatine Hill, are proof that empires fall, despite the wonders created by the political class in attempts to placate the masses. In addition, these sites show that every empire needs a war for victories, and enemies for threats. Sadly, we have not learned these lessons.
Hans Sennholz, RIP
Finally, I must add that Sennholz has never been shy about insisting on the centrality of ethics in the study of economics. He has decried the welfare state as confiscatory and immoral. He has called inflation a form of theft. He has identified government intervention as coercion contrary to the true spirit of cooperation.
Spooner Article Resurrected
Lysander Spooner was the foremost legal theorist of the 19th-century American individualist anarchist movement.
Can Governments Function Like Markets? Austrian Insights into Public-Choice Theory
Political entrepreneurs are experts at fabricating false crises to convince the public to acquiesce in their policy proposals.