Free Markets

Few opponents of the free market today support the replacement of capitalism by socialism. Even anti-capitalists have learned something from the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Gary North's government trap or capture model provides an abundant set of predictions about how governments accumulate power and control over industries.

But there is no moral norm involved in such issues as whether we own disposal units or what we put in them. Those are merely issues of technology that change with the times; our only restriction is not to impose on others' person or property.

It is private property and market prices or the law of the jungle, and no amount of fashionable cynicism about the market or romantic delusions about how nice life would be without it can obscure this fundamental choice.

History reveals that prohibitions are indeed classic examples of the co-opting of public-spirited intentions by rent seekers within the political process, thereby explaining the existence of what at first appears to be irrational policies.

Rent seeking is a search for privilege and personal gain through the political process. Rent seeking is distinguished from corruption in that rent seeking is legal and corruption is not.

We are glad that public choice economists started studying this topic three decades ago, and we hope to see a resurgence in explorations in the theory of anarchy.

Unfortunately, my experience with current undergrads is proving me wrong.

Paradoxical as it might first seem, the more liberal a state is internally, the more likely it will engage in outward aggression. Internal liberalism makes a society richer; a richer society to extract from makes the state richer, and a richer state makes for more and more successful expansionist wars

Since abilities and interests are naturally diverse, a drive toward making people equal in all or most respects is necessarily a leveling downward. The key issue in the entire discussion is simply this: shall the parent or the State be the overseer of the child?