Free Markets

While it did not make headway in this latest presidential campaign, events of the last year have weakened one of the longest-standing policies of the US government: the trade embargo with Cuba.

Just as the antitrust suit seems to be burning itself out, the enemies of Microsoft have launched another sneak attack, writes Lew Rockwell.

History frowns upon the belief that government protects children's rights, and yet that is precisely the claim that undergirds child labor laws, now enforced in most parts of the world. Hardly anyone dares question their existence, much less the conventional history of child labor, no matter how many children and families continue to be victimized by government regulation of labor.

Production and price controls, not deregulation, are the cause of the state's energy miseries, writes George Reisman.

This indispensable selection of articles that Murray Rothbard wrote for the Rothbard-Rockwell Report contains the most insightful comment on foreign policy I have ever read. In a few paragraphs, Rothbard destroys the prevailing doctrine

Deepak Lal, a distinguished development economist, might have entitled this book The Rise and Future Decline of the West. In his view, the nations of Western Europe first discovered the secret of economic prosperity. 

Peter Bauer possesses a rare ability: he can see the obvious. Several philosophers discussed in this issue-Rawls, Dworkin, and Cohen -rail on and on about equality. 

Statism was the primary theme of this year's election. The political issues of the day were all approached from the interventionist point of view. For George W. Bush and Al Gore, it was not a matter of whether government should be running a social security scheme or not. It was only a matter of how government might save it.

Human action really is different from the physical sciences, says Gene Callahan. Collecting data and testing results doesn't tell you want you want to know.

Consider an essay by social theorist Alan Wolfe, in which purports to analyze America's excessively consumerist capitalist society.