Liberty & Power: Group Blog
Entries by Sheldon Richman
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Barack Harold Obama
I don't think Republicans would be using Obama's middle name if it weren't Middle Eastern-sounding. Do you?
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Frankly, He's a Criminal and Should be in Prison
If you want to see the criminality of the U.S. government in all its glory, observe that Rep. Barney Frank, one of the men responsible for the current economic debacle, will head the investigation into what caused that debacle.
About the bailout of Wall Street, Frank had the nerve to say, "We were the EMTs rushing to the rescue of an economy that suddenly found itself choking, but now we have to perform more serious reform."
A better analogy would be this: Frank & Co. were choking the American people and while doing so, they picked the people's pockets and handed their money to Wall Street.
When will guys like this finally go to prison?
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, October 3, 2008
The Debate
Some cable commentators, Joe Scarborough, for one, think Sarah Palin deep down is a libertarian. It must be really deep down because there was no sign of it last night. Her explanation for the economic turmoil is "greed and corruption on Wall Street," which she promised McCain and she would clean up. You couldn't even tell from her remarks that Fannie and Freddie were creatures of the government. She pointed out that McCain favored tough regulation of them years ago.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Luxury or Necessity?
Have you noticed how many pro-"free-market" politicians and pundits believe that theory is a luxury we cannot afford in this time of crisis? What they are probably too dense to realize is that their support for a bailout of Wall Street is also based on a theory. Only it's a bad one.
With allies like that, we hardly need adversaries.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
The Pretense of Regulatory Knowledge
Advocates of the free market are sometimes parodied for their seemingly all-purpose answer to any problem: Let the market handle it. What may sound like a simplistic answer, however, is actually the most complex prescription imaginable. In the modern world, the workings of any particular market are so complicated, they are beyond the grasp of mere mortals. Moment by moment, day by day, so many subtly interrelated decisions are made by so many people worldwide that no individual or group could possibly understand the big picture in any detailed way. So there is nothing simplistic about proposing the market as a solution to an economic problem. It’s short way of saying: let the multitude of knowledgeable people seeking profit, risking their own money, and responding to incentives find a solution based on persuasion not force. Translated that way, it sounds like a promising approach. Ironically, those who don’t appreciate markets are in fact the ones who offer a simplistic, even empty alleged solution to economic problems: government regulation.The rest of this week's TGIF, "The Pretense of Regulatory Knowledge," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Welfare State or Corporate State?
It's a grave mistake to portray the economic problems as consequences of the welfare state, as traditionally defined. Rather, this is a failure of the corporate state, or state capitalism. Not only is this the truth, it also knocks the state socialists off balance. Let the conservatives argue that the failing system was designed to help low-income people. We know better: it was designed to politically funnel money to bankers, home builders, and the real-estate profession. As usual, low-income people were mere pawns in a special-interest scheme to shift risk from big business to the taxpayers.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Moving Target
The people who refuse to believe that their beloved home-ownership promotion program is largely to blame for what's going on today can't quite make up their minds about what is to blame. They "know" it has something to do with not enough regulation. But what? First they argued that the Bush regime engaged in an orgy of deregulation. They had to drop that line, however, because the last significant act of banking deregulation was signed by Bill Clinton in 1999. So they changed to "someone was asleep at the switch." Vivid metaphor, but no one has come up with an actual instance of a regulator being asleep at whatever switch he allegedly was asleep at. So now there's a new argument, voiced by Hillary Clinton this morning: the Bush regime failed to anticipate the need for a new regulatory structure in the global economy. (I won't ask why her husband also failed in that regard.)
To quote John Stossel, "Give me a break!"
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Was the Constitution Really Meant to Constrain the Government?
My message is not one of despair. But we will not cause the freedom philosophy to prevail merely by invoking a political document written by men who thought the main problem with America was too little, not too much, government. Rather, we must cut to the chase and convince people directly that our concepts of freedom and justice best accord with logic -- and their own deepest moral sense.The rest of this week's TGIF, "Was the Constitution Really Meant to Constrain the Government?" is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
On Winning and Losing Wars
The campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has already gotten tedious. In a campaign appearance the other day, he said in his characteristically sanctimonious way, “I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”We ought to be jaded enough by politics to know that when a candidate says he’d rather lose the campaign than do X, Y, or Z, he’s being anything but courageous. Nothing is more calculated to help one win the White House than to say he’d “rather be right than president.” The last guy to say it and apparently mean it was Henry Clay in 1839.
The rest of my op-ed, "On Winning and Losing Wars," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Getting Rights Wrong
It's the Fourth of July, the day we ought to contemplate and rejoice in Jefferson's radical declaration of the "self-evident" truth that all individuals are equally endowed with "certain unalienable Rights, ... among these ... Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Alas, the day cannot be one of unmitigated joy since we have again been reminded that the purported protectors of our liberties have little understanding of those rights. We thus live under constant threat from the very people who claim to protect us. As you might guess, I am referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Second Amendment case, District of Columbia v. Heller.The rest of this week's TGIF, "Getting Rights Wrong," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
From Rebels to Sheep
On this July 4th I observe with shame this news from my town, Conway, Arkansas, as reported in the Democrat Gazette this morning:
A con artist posing as an undercover drug cop struck twice in Conway within the past week, stealing hundreds of dollars from unsuspecting victims.Need one comment?
Conway Police Department Lt. Danny Moody said the man flashed a fake badge and told his victims to turn over their money. The cash was involved in a previous drug deal, he said, and may be contaminated with “drug residue.” The supposed cop said he needed to take the money so that a police drug dog could inspect it.
The victims handed over their money, Moody said, and the scam artist drove away.
Moody said the fake cop took a “substantial” amount from five victims at the Economy Inn on Saturday and at America’s Best Value Inn and Suites on Monday. He would say only that it was more than $200. The victims were from South Carolina and Texas.
Moody said the department has a suspect. The department believes the man ran the same scam in Arkadelphia and Benton previously.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Can You Really Love Your Country?
Why do people get upset with Barack Obama for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel or with Michelle Obama for suggesting she’s not been proud of her country until now? Why is failing to “support the troops” regarded as a sin?
I ponder such questions in my op-ed, "Can You Really Love Your Country?" at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Private Protection
I had the pleasure yesterday of attending a lecture by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, long-time libertarian writer/activist and a professor of economics at San Jose State University, on "national" defense in a free society. In making the case for private nonstate protection, he pointed that we already are protected to some extent from government invasion by private organizations. How so?
The U.S. government could be violating our freedom a lot more than it is now. During World War I, Eugene Debs was jailed for making a speech defending war opponents. This doesn't happen today. The main reason freedom of speech is more secure than it used to be is that the ACLU and other civil-liberties groups have for years promoted the idea to the public that free speech is a good thing. Moreover, whenever the state makes a move against it, these groups spring into action. That is, they act as private defense agencies. Interestingly, they are nonprofit and unarmed. Their weapons are ideas, which Hummel emphasizes are always the ultimate defenses against tyranny. As he says, "Force doesn't rule the world. Ideas rule the world because ideas determine in which direction people point their guns."
On the other side, Hummel pointed out, our freedom to own guns is to some extent protected by another set of private organizations, most prominently (if highly imperfectly), the National Rifle Association. Again, their weapons are ideas, not (ironically) guns.
This is not to say the protection is flawless -- far from it. But it is not insignificant. Think how much worse the U.S. government could be. If we want private protection to work better, we need to win people over to a set of ideas not as riddled by contradictions and compromises as the current set is.
But the point stands. Private organizations can defend liberty against tyranny. If they can do it with respect to the the U.S. government, they can do it with respect to any government.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Who Said This?
"Many of his policies did not work as intended but in the end FDR deserves great credit for having the courage to abandon failed paradigms and to do what needed to be done."
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Privatized Profits, Socialized Losses
The Federal Reserve's decision to underwrite the bailout of Bear Stearns, the giant investment bank that's in deep trouble because of its involvement with securities backed by bad subprime mortgages, further exposes what is called capitalism as a system of government intervention on behalf of capital. The problem is, as usual, that capitalism will continue to be equated with "free market," which is now valiantly being saved by George II, Fed head Ben Bernanke, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
The subprime problem has its roots in pro-business government intervention; the policies at fault were designed to help the housing industry and the lenders who write mortgages. Now the other shoe is falling. Big lenders and investors handling securitized mortgages who are in over their heads will get their promised bailout under the "too big to fail" doctrine. And the rescue will set the table for the next round of bad business decisions and the next bailout. It's called moral hazard.
What does this have to do with the free market? As Kevin Carson likes to say, if this is the free market, then I'm against it. Of course, it is not the free market. The free market is a profit and loss system void of privilege. When businesses fail, they are supposed to actually fail, not turn to the taxpayers. What we really have is (state or political) capitalism, corporatism, or fascism. An essential characteristic of this system is that while profits are private, losses are socialized, i.e., ultimately covered by the mass of people without political clout.
Unfortunately, potential allies of libertarians won't catch the distinction and will thus be further alienated from true free-market thinking. They won't realize that the free market is the system that would deliver what they want, particularly much of what they call "social justice."
Now is the time for us to draw the distinctions as sharply as possible. Down with "vulgar libertarianism"!
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Ron Paul: The Lost Opportunity?
Ron Paul has done an immense amount of good in promoting the pro-freedom, anti-war, and anti-empire message. To be sure, it is not pure libertarianism. To get a sense of what he has accomplished, however, you should read Brian Doherty's cover story in the February Reason magazine. Here's a key part, describing an appearance in Iowa:
Thursday, January 3, 2008
The Illegal-Immigration Issue in a Nutshell
Respect for the law is due only to laws that warrant respect -- namely, those that reflect the natural law of justice.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
The Slippery Slope of Intellectual "Property" Law
"[T]he [recording] industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.
"The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files [Jeffrey] Howell [of Scottsdale, Ariz.] made on his computer from legally bought CDs are 'unauthorized copies' of copyrighted recordings."
Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
On Amnesty
Ron Paul says he's against amnesty for migrants without government papers. I am too. Amnesty is a pardon for wrong-doing. Why would migrants without government papers need a pardon? They've done nothing wrong. But in the spirit of the season, the migrants might consider granting amnesty to the government thugs who have hounded them since they got here.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Ron Paul and Immigration
I still think there is value in Ron Paul's campaign, but this commercial sure doesn't make it easy. Note that he takes the Tancredo position that earlier immigrants "followed the rules" and came here legally. But back then you had to have an infectious disease to be denied entry. Virtually everyone else could come in. Illegal immigration was unnecessary since there were essentially open borders. I continue to be appalled that Ron Paul is parroting the line of the worst opponents of immigration.
By the way, where does the U.S. Constitution give Congress the power to control immigration? Or is that an implied power?
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Ron Paul and David Schuster
Ron Paul's MSNBC appearance with David Schuster, in which Lincoln and the Civil War were discussed for seven minutes, was a disaster. Why Ron Paul let it go on, rather than insist that they should be discussing a war that he could actually do something about if elected, is beyond me. No one who was not already a Lincoln revisionist would have been impressed. Schuster and his producers wanted to convey the message that Ron Paul is not a serious candidate (a "crackpot," as Jack Jacobs called him to his "face") -- and Ron Paul played their shameful game. A very big mistake indeed. Who's calling the shots in that campaign?
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
More on Ron Paul and "Meet the Press"
Interesting that Tim Russert didn't ask Ron Paul about the Iraq war, but did ask him about the Civil War. Didn't that end about 140 years ago?
MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery."He might have emphasized that Lincoln did not forcibly prevent southern secession to end slavery but rather to preserve the Union and said that he would have maintained slavery had that been necessary to keep the Union intact.REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn't have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the--that iron, iron fist..
MR. RUSSERT: We'd still have slavery.
REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn't sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.
But let his sink in. Russert didn't ask Ron Paul about Iraq but he asked him about the Civil War? What the hell is going on?
Here's the transcript.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Ron Paul on "Meet the Press"
I just finished watching. I'm afraid I had my usual reaction. I felt let down, like something was missing. For one thing, Ron Paul talks too much about the Constitution and too little about liberty and justice. War in Korea would okay if Congress wanted it? When was the last time Congress voted for a declaration of war without the president asking for it?
He also sounded unprepared. If he is going to call for ending the income tax (why that one and not the others?) and for bringing all the troops home, he should know the numbers. He looks like he's winging it. No excuse for that.
The immigration answer was a disaster. He persists in speaking of an invasion. How offensive! He's lucky Russert wasn't better prepared. How does Ron Paul know we'd have fewer immigrants if the welfare state were abolished? I think we'd have more, considering how attractive the economic environment would be. But would he open the borders then? I'm not convinced he would. I am more and more suspicious of this welfare-state rationalization for immigration control. It has worn so thin there is virtually nothing left of whatever credibility it had.
I think I'll stop watching news of the campaign. I'm tired of being disappointed.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Prioritize!
Much anti-immigrant sentiment, even among some libertarians, appears fueled by resentment that non-citizens might get tax-financed welfare benefits. This gives a curious amount of offense, especially when it concerns so-called "illegals," whom I prefer to think of as residents without government papers. (Like that's a big deal.)
I can only say this: There are things that offend me far more than foreign-born people's going on welfare. Here are two in no particular order:
1. Native-born Americans' going on welfare. (They were born in the "land of the free" and are supposed to know better.)
2. State-police tactics, including the witch-hunting of employers who have the audacity to hire "illegals," designed to catch or prevent the migration of people who are merely exercising their natural liberty.
Let's get our priorities straight.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Individualism, Collectivism, and Other Murky Labels
The rest of this week's TGIF, "Individualism, Collectivism, and Other Murky Labels," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.Imagine the following person. He believes all individuals should be free to do "anything that's peaceful" and therefore favors private property, free global markets, freedom of contract, civil liberties, and all the related ideas that come under the label "libertarianism" (or liberalism). Obviously he is not a statist. But is he an individualist and a capitalist or a socialist and a collectivist? It sounds like an easy question, but on closer inspection it's not.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Woodstock May Have Saved Sen. McCain’s Life
John McCain scored a standing ovation at the last Republican presidential debate when he attacked Sen. Hillary Clinton for proposing — unsuccessfully — to spend a million taxpayer dollars on a museum commemorating the 1969 Woodstock festival, saying, “Now, my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time. But the fact is, my friends, no one can be president of the United States that supports projects such as these.” It would be easy to criticize McCain for politically exploiting his five-and-half years of suffering as a captive of the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. But there’s a more important point to be made.The rest of my op-ed, "Woodstock May Have Saved Sen. McCain’s Life," is at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Robertson Endorses Giuliani
So let me get this straight: Rudy Giuliani denounces Ron Paul for saying that U.S. foreign intervention in the Middle East created the conditions for the 9/11 attacks, but he accepts the endorsement of a man -- Pat Robertson -- who said that his god may have allowed the attacks to occur in order to punish Americans for homosexuality, abortion, and other moral decline. Okay, I think I have it now.
While we're at this, let's note that Robertson has also attributed killer hurricanes to his god's wrath.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, October 19, 2007
What Nearly Killed Liberalism
The shifting meaning of the word liberal in the direction of statism has been analyzed often. But a few years ago Anthony de Jasay wrote a short comment on the matter that deserves attention. For Mr. de Jasay, the problem is not merely terminological. As he wrote in "Liberalism, Loose or Strict" (Independent Review, Winter 2005), while political ideas such as nationalism and socialism have had core principles, "Liberalism, I maintain, has never had such an irreducible and unalterable core element. As a doctrine, it has always been rather loose, tolerant of heterogeneous components, easy to influence, open to infiltration by alien ideas that are in fact inconsistent with any coherent version of it. One is tempted to say that liberalism cannot protect itself because its 'immune system' is too weak." His statement does seem to explain why liberalism has taken many forms over the centuries.The rest of this week's TGIF, "What Nearly Killed Liberalism," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Naomi Klein: Free-Market Ally?
I haven't read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Treatment: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Her thesis is that crony capitalists use crises to foist their "reforms" on otherwise unwilling people. Sounds like it should be read in conjunction with Robert Higgs's Crisis and Leviathan.
Although Klein is not an advocate of a true free market, she seems to be an ally in struggle against corporatism. We should cultivate that alliance in public statements about her book and reinforce her inchoate view that being for the market is far from the same thing as being for capitalism.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Monday, September 24, 2007
A Chip Off Old Big Brother's Block
Late last month the California Senate and Assembly sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to prohibit employers from requiring workers to have RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips implanted under their skin. North Dakota and Wisconsin already have passed similar laws. Two other states are considering bans. VeriChip (motto, appropriately: "RFID for People") already has FDA permission to sell a device suitable for human implantation. Some people find this form of ID attractive because it can't be lost or, presumably, counterfeited easily. (We'll see about that.) But others, especially organizations dedicated to protecting privacy, object to treating other people like pets. What should an advocate of liberty think of all this?The rest of last week's TGIF, "A Chip Off Old Big Brother's Block," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, August 3, 2007
No Substitute for History
The great economist Ludwig von Mises showed that economics can be deduced from the axiom that human beings act: individuals consciously select ends and apply scarce means to achieve them. By examining the logical implications of that undeniable fact, one can come to understand the concepts value, cost, time preference, supply, demand, money, price, profit, interest, and so on. In light of this, it is noteworthy that Mises was also an accomplished historian. And more than that, he was an important historiographer; that is, he was interested in the why and how of history. This theorist who is so identified with the a priori method in economics also believed that a knowledge of history and its methods was indispensable to understanding the world.The rest of this week's TGIF column, "No Substitute for History," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Syllogism
The state by nature is a threat to life, liberty, and property;
War is the health of the state (Bourne);
War is thus by nature a threat to life, liberty, and property;
No libertarian can consistently support what is by nature a threat to life, liberty, and property;
Ergo, no libertarian can support war.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Ahistorical "Libertarian" Warmongers
Legal scholar Randy Barnett wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that one can be a libertarian and also support the war in Iraq. (Judge for yourself: "Libertarians and the War.") Much could be said about this woeful article. But I'll touch on just one point for now.
Nowhere in Barnett’s article does one find a hint that the leading, pioneering classical liberals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not just skeptical of the government’s war-making power; rather they were forthrightly antiwar, anti-empire, and pro-peace. These include Frederic Bastiat, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, and William Graham Sumner. This is no coincidence. These men were not ivory-tower theorists; they were historians as well as keen observers of contemporary events, applying libertarian principles to the historical conduct of politicians, bureaucrats, and diplomats. It was Sumner, echoing many before him, who pointed out that "national defense" means "war, debt, taxation, diplomacy, a grand governmental system, pomp, glory, a big army and navy, lavish expenditures, political jobbery." The liberals unfailingly understood that war meant the mass murder of innocents and regimentation at home. Nothing is easier for a politician than conjuring up a "self-defense" justification for war, but the great classical liberals would have nothing to do with it. For one thing, they realized that the self-defense analogy is bogus. When an individual defends himself, he does not tax others to help him, conscript others, or bomb the attacker's friends and family, who may be completely innocent of wrongdoing. The state is not an individual. The rules are different.
I think this gets at an underlying flaw in Barnett’s case. He, like others, approaches libertarianism in a hyper-rationalistic, ahistorical way. If in his view a policy position cannot be reached deductively from libertarian first principles, he concludes that libertarianism per se has nothing to say about it. But his method is wrong. Libertarianism isn’t purely an a priori theory. It's a set of insights about human beings and a unique historical institution -- the state -- insights produced by centuries of experience. Libertarianism properly conceived is an interplay of theory and history, neither ever losing sight of the other. It is, as Chris Sciabarra notes, dialectical.
Barnett curiously combines his simplistic a priori approach to libertarianism with a vulgar dilettantism regarding current events void of detailed knowledge about the
And why are libertarian such as Barnett comfortable with this dubious methodology with respect to foreign policy? Because not far below the surface, they are nationalists. The nation is still a special unit of emotional value -- particularly the U.S. There's an implicit theory of exceptionalism here too. That accounts for their lack of interest in the history of U.S. intervention.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Disappointed
I like Ron Paul and think he's done a great service by bringing his sensible views on the Iraq war and the 9/11 attacks to the public's attention. That is the most important thing that has happened in the presidential campaign so far, and it will be tough to beat. I've long known that Ron Paul takes an unlibertarian position on immigration. Still I am deeply disappointed to learn, from an article in the latest Liberty magazine, that he calls the illegal entry of Mexicans into the United States an "invasion." This description, given in a fundraising letter, is outrageous. These are human beings, with rights, seeking better lives in an environment more free than the one they are in. For the overwhelming majority of them, complying with U.S. law, an immoral law that violates all our rights, means never getting here--ever. They mean us no harm; on the contrary, they seek a place in the division of labor.
Therefore, they are not invaders and their entry in no way constitutes an invasion. This is belligerent Pat Buchanan-talk, and it is unworthy of Ron Paul. I hope he will rethink his position.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Free Trade Imperialism
Here's something left-libertarians need to attend to: Deepak Lal of UCLA is touting a program of unilateral free trade AND unabashed U.S. worldwide empire. His book In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order seems to be his most complete statement on this.
Here are some quotes from his article "Empire and Order" in the March/April issue of Historically Speaking (apparently not online):
[T]oday there is again an imperial power that has an economic and military predominance unseen since the fall of Rome. The United States is indubitably an empire. It is more than a hegemon, as it seeks control over not only foreign but also aspects of domestic policy in other countries. But it an informal and indirect empire.... It is an empire that has taken over from the British the burden of maintaining a Pax to allow free trade and commerce to flourish. This Pax brings mutual gains. The U.S., like the British in the 19th century, has borne much of the costs of providing this global public good, not because of altruism but because the mutual gains from a global, liberal economic order benefit America and foster its economic well being....Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Free the New Youth 4!
A new blog has been started with the objective of freeing four young Chinese imprisoned for exercising their natural rights to free speech and assembly. "Free the New Youth 4!" can be found here. Here's the post explaining the blog:
Cross-posted at Free Association.On May 28, 2003, Jin Haike (靳海科), Xu Wei (徐伟), Yang Zili (杨子立) and Zhang Honghai (张宏海) were sentenced to between eight and ten years for the crime of “subverting state power.” Their charges stemmed from a small, informal discussion group they’d formed and dubbed the “New Youth Study Group” in order to debate ways in which China could further progress and prosper.
The New Youth 4 Coalition seeks to end their unjust imprisonment and return freedom to these four individuals who represent the best of Chinese progressivism and forward thinking.
We hope that through the power of dialogue and communication, the Chinese authorities will correct this grave injustice.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Rudolph Giuliani, Radical Free-Marketeer?
The Ron Paul moment in the second GOP "debate" made me forget another extraordinary remark by Rudolph Giuliani. He said said Hillary Clinton believes "an unfettered free market is the most disastrous thing in modern America."
What? Are we to conclude that Giuliani -- the persecutor of Michael Milken -- or anyone else who was on that stage, favors an unfettered free market? (Only Ron Paul comes anywhere near that position.)
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
"Science versus Consensus"
Considering the recent discussions here about science, consensus, and global warming, I thought this paper by Frank Van Dun would be of interest. Here's how it gets off the ground:
Tonight I am not going to comment on any particular item in the vast field of the “science” that supposedly underpins the Summary for Policy Makers (published on February 2, 2007) of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I have no competence to deal with any of it. I shall restrict my comments to two aspects of the IPCC’s treatment of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW):
1) How unproven assumptions built into computer models serve to transform the available “science” into a prediction of the state of the global climate a hundred years from now.
2) How the uncertainties and controversies that characterize science and research on the work floor disappear behind the shrouds of the supposed consensus on CAGW and the supposed fact that it is now 90% certain that CAGW is occurring.
To make such comments, one need not be a “climate scientist”. They rely on common sense, memory, and little bit of simple mathematics. For the sake of the argument then, I shall optimistically assume that “the science” is as good as one could expect, and leave it to the scientists to be sceptical with respect to each other’s work. My “Global Warming scepticism” concerns what the CAGW-establishment—the IPCC itself, and the political strategists, spin doctors, and technocrats in the EU and other international bureaucracies that have decided to hype CAGW—does with that science, how it coaxes it into a fallacious argument for its own sensationalist and alarmist conclusions and the political agenda they serve. In short, my scepticism concerns the alleged link between the available “science” and the so-called consensus on CAGW.
Friday, May 11, 2007
That Mercantilist Commerce Clause
The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution has been used to justify a wide expansion of government power, from antidiscrimination laws to drug prohibition to a ban on guns near schools. In objecting to use of the Commerce Clause for such remote purposes, some constitutionalists rely on a particular historical interpretation of both the Clause and the Constitution as a whole. Could that interpretation be wrong?The rest of this week's TGIF column, "That Mercantilist Commerce Clause," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Labor's "Right to a Free Market"
No issue is more contentious in labor relations than the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill, now pending in Congress, would require the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to recognize a union when "a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations." Under current federal law, an NLRB-supervised election must be held and a majority must vote by secret ballot for the union before it becomes government-certified. The union-backed EFCA would presumably make it easier to establish a union in a company, but opponents say worker intimidation would be encouraged with an open card-signing process versus a secret-ballot election. What should free-market advocates say about this controversy?The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Labor's 'Right to a Free Market,'" is at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
"Dangerousness Is Not a Disease"
Thomas Szasz's take on the Virginia Tech shooting is here at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
What's to Lose?
What would an American defeat in Iraq mean? Would evil Iraqis conquer the United States, force us all to speak Arabic, and convert us to Islam? Hardly. There is no threat whatsoever to the American people from the sectarian fighters in Baghdad or elsewhere in that country. Even the Iraqis who form the local al-Qaeda chapter have no designs on the United States. Indeed, they have their hands full in their own country. And their hands would be even fuller if the United States should withdraw. Even most Sunnis in Iraq despise the al-Qaeda types and their brutal methods. If anything holds the disparate Sunni factions together, it’s their common animosity to the U.S. occupation. So in what sense would “we” lose? From the standpoint of the American people, it would be no loss at all. Rather, it would be a victory.Read the rest of my latest op-ed, "What's to Lose?" at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Progressive Illiberalism
"The Progressive movement, which dominated the American scene in the years from the turn of the century to United State entrance in World War I, was not primarily a liberal movement," writes Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. in his magisterial work The Decline of American Liberalism. "[I]n contrast to former American efforts at reform, progressivism was based on a new philosophy, partly borrowed from Europe, which emphasized collective action through the instrumentality of government."Read the rest of my latest TGIF column, "Progressive Illiberalism," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Jeffersonianism Interred
For historian Arthur A. Ekirch Jr., the decline of American liberalism tracked the rise of nationalism and the corporate state, the intimate alliance between business and government. He equates liberalism -- libertarianism -- with economic freedom and property rights for the common citizen, not just for an aristocracy. From the relative, though imperfect, laissez-faire periods of the Jefferson and Jackson presidencies, the United States moved almost unswervingly to become what Albert Jay Nock would call a "Merchant-state" in which the central government heavily intervened on behalf of particular business interests, hampering the independence and progress of upstart competitors as well as workers. For most people, this is what the word "capitalism" would come to denote. (See "TGIF: Arthur A. Ekirch Jr.,'s The Decline of American Liberalism.")Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Jeffersonianism Interred," at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.
The Civil War was the great impetus in this direction....
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism
I like revisiting classic, and unfortunately forgotten, works in the (classical) liberal, or libertarian, canon. This pays several dividends. For one, it brings great books to the attention of people who never knew they existed. Moreover, old books often contain insights and information you can find nowhere else. Murray Rothbard was fond of pointing out that, contrary to what people assume, knowledge does not advance inexorably "onward and upward." Important things can be omitted, overlooked, and forgotten. Consequently, later books on a subject can be less complete than earlier books. So it is wrong to think that the older books need not be consulted because subsequent work incorporates everything of value from the past.
I first became acquainted with the late Arthur A. Ekirch Jr.'s The Decline of American Liberalism in my college days. The book was first published in 1955, then reissued in 1967. It was a History Book Club selection and, I've been told, a contender for a national book award. Ekirch wrote nine other books, including Ideologies and Utopias: The Impact of the New Deal on American Thought (1971) and The Civilian and the Military (1972), especially relevant today....
Ekirch wrote for the intelligent nonspecialist, and his work sets the standard for accessible scholarship. The Decline of American Liberalism is a great place to start because it provides a readable look at the whole of American political-economic-intellectual history in under 400 pages. I highly recommend it.
Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Arthur Ekirch's The Decline of American Liberalism," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Exporting the Welfare State
So George II is in Latin America bragging about how much "social justice money" the "generous" American taxpayers have provided countries in the region. Social justice money? "In other words, it's money for education and health," Bush said. Right, he's exporting the welfare state.
Then he announced an ethanol deal with Brazil, enlisting that country in his campaign to forcibly pick the next energy winner. But don't expect him to lift a finger to remove the stiff tariff on Brazilian ethanol. "It's not going to happen," Bush said.
Did someone actually think we would let our little brothers to the south compete freely with our corn producers, who are so vital to national security? Those Brazilians make ethanol from sugar. Hey, we also have a sugar industry to protect here. And don't forget Archer Daniels Midland.
Let's not take this generosity thing too far.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Free to Migrate
No matter what the advocates of free immigration say about the natural individual right to move without government permission, many people remain unconvinced because they expect theory and practice to diverge. Open borders may be good in the abstract, we're told, but the theory doesn't reflect what happens in the real world. To begin, we ought to be suspicious of any claim that a good theory and practice part ways....The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Free to Migrate," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Stop Them!
Do President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have no idea of what made the founding of this country unique? It was the people’s deeply held belief that arbitrary rule by the state is an evil to be resisted at all costs. Even early America’s conservative elements, who hoped to remain in the British Empire, finally went over to the revolutionists’ side when King George III accelerated his arbitrary decrees governing the American people. Nothing indicts Bush-Cheney as profoundly as their displayed contempt for habeas corpus. I have no doubt that if they thought they could get away with it, they’d suspend it for citizens too.Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "Stop Them!" at The Future of Freedom website.
Note well: the Constitution does not distinguish citizens from noncitizens. If the gang-run-amok in the White House can suspend habeas corpus for aliens, it can do so for the rest of us.
The threat to Americans from terrorism is minuscule compared with the threat from these megalomaniacs.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Imperial Hopefuls
[N]one of the "hopefuls" is actually running for president. The job they seek isn’t merely the head of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Given the realities of the world, they are running for emperor. No one is qualified for that job.Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "Imperial Hopefuls," at The Future of Freedom website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Made Everywhere
In reality there are no imports and exports. There is only what I make and what everyone else makes. Few people would want to live just on what they themselves could make.... The case for free trade is conceded the moment someone eschews self-sufficiency. After that, we're just haggling over the size of the trade area. But if free trade (read: division of labor) is good, then the bigger the free-trade area the better. Globalization should be the worldwide removal of all barriers to the exchange of goods and services -- rather than trade managed through state capitalism and multinational bureaucracies. Unilateral, unconditional free trade is the smartest policy.Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Made Everywhere," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Know When to Fold 'Em
Hawks such as Sen. John McCain who oppose Senate resolutions against the so-called troop surge in Iraq make a pernicious argument. Such a resolution “is basically a vote of no confidence in the men and women we are sending over there,” McCain said. "We’re saying, ‘We’re sending you — we’re not going to stop you from going there, but we don’t believe you can succeed.'"Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "Know When to Fold 'Em," at The Future of Freedom website.
McCain is right in one respect: The senators who oppose the escalation should be doing more than pushing a nonbinding resolution. They should be doing everything they can to stop President Bush’s war, even if that requires a constitutional confrontation with the executive branch.
But McCain and his ilk go further than pointing out an inconsistency in the Democratic chicken-doves. They think no one should ever say that U.S. troops cannot prevail in Iraq or in any other military mission.
If they really believe this, they display the mentality of a fanatical nationalist and imperialist. It hardly recommends one for the presidency.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, February 16, 2007
The Rent-Seeking Habit
Wal-Mart's CEO and his chief nemesis, the head of the Service Employees International Union, have joined forces. They recently appeared together at a news conference to endorse "universal health care," sugar-words for medicine by coercive bureaucracy. No, this is not another article about why a government-based medical system is a terrible idea. This is an article about a business leader looking to the state for a bailout.Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "The Rent-Seeking Habit," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, February 9, 2007
Health Hazard
Back in the days before America had an income tax (yes, son, I've read there really was such a time), proposals to impose the tax were met with warnings that it would be "inquisitorial." Opponents apparently didn't see its potential for manipulating behavior. But what more effective carrot and stick is there than an income tax?Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
... The tax system has no doubt distorted the medical industry along with lots of other things. But any piecemeal way out will surely introduce its own distortions by upsetting long-standing plans and depriving people of their money. The early critics were right: The income tax is poison to a society that values freedom and spontaneous order. We should have never gotten started with it.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
The Freeman
The January-February issue of The Freeman is now in my hands. Here are some highlights:
Cross-posted at Free Association.
- "Climate Change: What If They're Right?" by Max Borders
- "Europe Meets America: Property Rights in the New World" by Andrew P. Morriss
- "Open-Source Software: Who Needs Intellectual Property Rights?" by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
- "The Sovereign Presidency: Is This What the Framers Had in Mind?" by Joseph R. Stromberg
- "The Fed's Potent Power" by Donald J. Boudreaux
- "Big Government -- Big Risk" by David R. Henderson
Friday, February 2, 2007
Inequality Matters
In the controversy now raging over whether income inequality in America is growing a lot or a little, some pro-market people say it doesn’t much matter. This attitude is unjustified, not to mention harmful to the cause of individual freedom because it misses the bigger picture.Read the rest of this week's TGIF column, "Inequality Matters," at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
No Need for Energy Subsidies
For a guy who claims to believe in limited government, President Bush is awfully good at dangling subsidies and threatening coercion when he wants to encourage or discourage something. That’s the lesson to take from his State of the Union Address.Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "No Need for Energy Subsidies," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.
Look at what he said about energy....
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Lost Articles
The Constitution says that to be elected to the U.S. Senate, a person has to be 30 or older, a citizen for at least nine years, and a resident of the state from which the candidate is elected.Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Alas, it says nothing about knowing American history.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
A More Progressive Tax
The Treasury Department (pdf) says George II's proposed limited tax deduction for medical insurance will make the income tax more progressive.
I thought he favored the flat tax.
Hat tip: TaxProf Blog
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, January 19, 2007
"Congressional Generosity" and the Power to Tax
Every now and then we get a glimpse into what government officials really think about our rights to life, liberty, and property. The U.S. Justice Department recently provided such a glimpse in a controversial tax case, Murphy v. IRS.Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
How revealing it is! Did you know that if the government abstains from taxing all your income, you should be grateful for this "congressional generosity"?
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Rising Prices Won't Mitigate Minimum-Wage Effects
Newspaper stories about raising the minimum wage often quote people who say the employment effects of an increase will be held down because sellers will raise prices and pass the extra cost on to their customers. (See this story on the effects of Arkansas's increase last October.)
But not so fast. If prices rise, where will we consumers get the extra money to maintain our present buying patterns? (I didn't get a raise.) If prices go up at my favorite restaurant, I'll have two choices: eat there less often or spend less elsewhere. Either way, jobs are in jeopardy.
Bastiat and Hazlitt were right.
Cross-posted at Free Association.
Friday, January 5, 2007
Two New Articles
The least appreciated form of tyranny in the United States goes by the names "redevelopment" and "government-business partnership." While everyone knows about the threat of development-oriented eminent domain, thanks to the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, local tyranny goes much deeper than the "mere" taking of property in order to give it to another private party. A case out of Port Chester, N.Y., illustrates the danger.The rest of this week's TGIF column is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.
Over the last several days former President Gerald R. Ford has been repeatedly praised for “healing” the nation in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Democrat, Republican, and solemn pundit alike paid extravagant tribute to the man who, in their view, saved the American people from “disaster.” But is that what Ford really did? . . . “The long national nightmare is over,” Ford said. But it wasn’t a nightmare for the American people. It was a nightmare for the power elite. Their very legitimacy was in peril. The debt to Ford for restoring their legitimacy is owed by those who hold and aspire to power, not by those who suffer under it.Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "What Exactly Did Gerald Ford Heal?," at The Future of Freedom Foundation's website. Cross-posted at Free Association.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Scenes from a State Funeral
There they were, watching as the casket bearing former President Gerald R. Ford was taken to Air Force One for the trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan: former congressmen, former House staffers, current congressmen, and other dignitaries.
Intoned MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews: "They are the foothills of Mount Rushmore."
Gag me with a spoon.
Cross-posted at Free Association.