When the Winter Olympics came to Salt Lake City last year, some of the dirt that visiting journalists dug up to soil Utah's good name was the issue of polygamy. Polygamy, the practice of having more than one spouse at the same time, especially wives, is against the law. But, should it be?
The fundamental issue in banking and monetary policy, writes Guido Hülsmann, is whether government can improve the monetary institutions of the unhampered market. All government intervention in this field boils down to schemes that increase the quantity of money beyond what it otherwise would be. Such schemes confer no social benefit but rather only serve redistributive purposes.
Economic libertarians focus on the fallacy of minimum-wage legislation because the issue serves as a window through which to observe the very soul of a policy world view. It is the pons asinorum of the relationship between economics and politics. If the free market works—meaning the existence of exchange under private property and contract enforcement—then there is no need for such laws.
This is a pernicious book. It comes to us in false pretenses. Farber and Sherry profess themselves opponents of "grand theorists" in constitutional law.
The judiciary's war on private property continues in Las Vegas. To borrow a line from Rush Limbaugh, the bad guys in the old west used to wear black hats, now they wear black robes.
The ACLU constantly files lawsuits against property owners who attempt to protect their property rights. Many of these lawsuits are supposedly to protect free speech rights. But can there be a right to freedom of speech unless that right is firmly based on property rights?
Complete privatization will not lead to ideal results, but it will unravel most of the anticompetitive practices that exist in the cable industry. The lesson that we should draw from the results of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is that efforts to partially privatize the industry are likely to retain those elements of regulations that benefit concentrated interests in business most.
It has finally come down to this: Martha Stewart must go to prison, or at the very least be forced to step down from her position as CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
While protectionism may temporarily prop up inefficient industries and businesses, ultimately market forces will prevail, hurting even the favored industry. An insider tells the story of the copper industry--and how it ultimately lost out to fiber optics.
Abercrombie & Fitch, a constant winner in the voluntary "dollar-vote" elections of the market, is accused of being an intensely racist company in both its employment practices and its product marketing. In fact, it is doing nothing but what should be permitted in a free society: finding a market niche and making a profit.
