Robert Kaplan's newest book seems to be, bottom line, a briefing book to justify the switches and turns, contradictions, and conflicting rationales for American foreign policy and the domestic political control to which it is tightly bound, while freeing the government to to do anything it wants, anywhere in the world it wants.
Why is there so much religious passion in the tone of the Microsoft critics? Why is it so difficult to understand that the marketplace is a far better evaluator of Microsoft's product than a federal judge who tries to synthesize, express, and enforce the whims of 20 million consumers whom he's never talked to?
Can there be a right to freedom of speech without that right being firmly based on property rights?
Contrary to popular myth, every Republican president since and including Herbert Hoover has increased the federal government's size, scope, or power. Over the last one hundred years, of the five presidents who presided over the largest domestic spending increases, four were Republicans.
Professional victimologists see bad investors as victims of biased research. But they ignore the fact that smart investors have plenty of chances to avoid bad advice. What the losers from the Enron collapse got taken in by was the Fed-induced Bubble, not someone else's bad research. Those who would impose additional bureaucratic restrictions on Wall Street only penalize everyone to protect the gullible.
There has been a lot of talk recently about foreigners who hate our prosperity and civilization, and seek ways to inflict violence in retaliation. Well, here is another case in point, except these are not swarthy Islamic terrorists; they are diplomats and statesmen on nobody's list of suspicious characters.
The January 15 decision in EEOC v. Waffle House (99-1823) promises to reduce the immense efficiency gains to seeking resolution outside the court system by blocking another exit to the state's courts. If the right to choose an alternative venue for dispute resolution can be so severely circumscribed by the courts, one more check on judicial tyranny has been lost.
The brutal punishing of adults for the substances they ought to be able to ingest, inhale, or inject at their own peril is based on a parochial and moribund prior restraint argument. Considering the extent and severity of its assault on otherwise peaceable people, the state's conduct in the war on drugs befits the conduct of a criminal class, albeit a criminal class that enjoys the protection of the law.
Price fixing occurs when individuals from competing firms agree on what prices to charge for their products and services. Because private price fixing is illegal in the United States, these meetings are done in private and carry potential criminal penalties if the participants are apprehended. However, lest one think price fixing is a shady activity, consider that governments at all levels are the primary price fixers.
Since the government's rules for money creation are not working, it seems that the only plan of action that today's Keynesian economists should accept is for government to make counterfeiting legal. Lest anyone think this is silly, imagine the "stimulus" benefits that counterfeiting would produce.
