World History

Jeff Deist and Ed Stringham demolish the idea that only the state can manage and adjudicate human conflicts.

Everywhere we look, governments are trying to enhance and extend their own power. So why are so many of those same governments eager to sign on to "free trade" agreements. It's because such agreements have nothing to do with free trade.

Thanks to centuries of government interventionism, Brazil remains mired in a sluggish boom-bust economy, and the government has now squandered the benefits of decades of growth. Fortunately, free-market ideas are growing more popular in Brazil and may someday offer a way out.

Whether its drug prices, crushing debt, or unemployment, government can always come up with someone else to blame. Fortunately though, in spite of the lackluster economy the Fed and the government seem committed to giving us, there's hope for a much better future.

The most effective revolutions are in fact silent, slow, stubborn, and most importantly, peaceful.

With the Greek crisis fading in the minds of Europeans, the calls for Europe-wide political unity are fading. But the Euro elites will still strive for a world where both rich and poor member states can be coerced by a central European state.

Government regulation of immigrants is as illegitimate as any other kind of government regulation. But thanks to centuries of government meddling in private property, it remains very difficult to sort out what rightly is private property and if immigrants are trespassing on it.

The myth that markets cause more inequality than controlled economies continues to endure. But the data showing that markets and industrialization make millions better off than other economic systems continues to pile up.

Many governments — including the US — have often inhumanely forbidden families from supplying ransoms to kidnappers to save loved ones. The Obama administration recently, and correctly, suspended the practice of prosecuting families in these cases.

As news of Venezuela’s suffering keeps coming through, one cannot help but feel a certain sense of dread. All governments control the money supply to essentially the same extent that Maduro’s administration does. All around the world we have monetary socialism, where national currencies are subject solely to political power. And one cannot help but wonder (and fear) how many more such economic disasters it will take before it becomes clear that socialism of all shapes, sizes, and degrees, is unrealizable, unbearable, and unforgivable.