Legal System

Recorded at Mises University 2001.

Natural law does not depend directly on God’s will. Natural law goes back to at least the scholastics and perhaps Thomas Aquinas. Modern Natural Rights theory began in 1625. Modern theory recognizes the institution the state. Natural law is thought to produce inalienable natural rights. They speak to the dignity of the individual and life and property. The close connection between liberty and property is part of this tradition.

Free markets shift resources from where they are less valued to where they are most valued, benefiting consumers. When private property and free markets are allowed to operate, a natural conservation of resources occurs. Nothing is a resource unless it is useful to man.

Recorded at Mises University 2003.

Recorded at Mises University 2003.

Recorded at the Reassessing the Presidency seminar; March 2004. (25:41)

Not even Krugman advocates an economic system akin to what we see in North Korea of the former Soviet Union. Yet, as William Anderson points out, we are now left with a perplexing question: If socialism does not deliver the goods like bread and automobiles in large numbers and in high quality, why does anyone believe that the practice of medicine is an exception?

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.

In a recent testimony, Greenspan argued that we must be grateful to the Fed for its loose interest rate policy since January 2001. Without this policy, he suggested, we would probably be suffering a terrible economic slump by now. Shostak's analysis, however, shows that instead of strengthening in financial conditions, the Fed's policy produce the exact opposite. The data show an unsustainable recovery and deteriorating underlying conditions.

All libertarians—indeed, all reasonable people—can agree that the state licensure of floral designers is absurd, and anyone but the most naïve will recognize an exam to become one as nothing but a state-enforced cartel. But, writes Robert Murphy, unless we realize that all government regulations are violations of liberty, which represent nothing but a dishonest means of gouging consumers, piecemeal lawsuits will never bring justice.