Book Review: The Making of Modern Economics by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2001 The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers by Mark Skousen (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001); 485 pages; $25. IN THE EARLY DECADES OF THE 19TH CENTURY, Thomas Carlyle was the first one to call economics “the dismal science.” He considered the study of the market economy “dismal” because it emphasized individualism and freedom of association ...
Drug-War Killings in Peru by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2001 IN APRIL, two more innocent people were killed in the U.S government’s 30-year war on drugs. This time, the victims were a 35-year-old missionary named Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old baby, Charity, who were flying in a small Cessna from Brazil to Peru with Bowers’s husband, another of their children, and the pilot. After a CIA plane issued an alert ...
John Stuart Mill and the Three Dangers to Liberty by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2001 JOHN STUART MILL’S 1859 ESSAY “On Liberty” is one of the most enduring and powerful defenses of individual freedom ever penned. Both advocates and enemies of personal freedom have challenged either the premises or the logic in Mill’s argument. They have pointed out inconsistencies or incompleteness in his reasoning. But the ...
Free Markets Aren’t Conservative by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2001 One of the great myths of the Industrial Age is that businessmen generally like free markets. That myth has deep implications and consequences. For example, someone who buys into it will tend to believe that proposals to deregulate markets are simply favors for special interests and inimical to the interests ...
Send Chainsaws to AID by James Bovard June 1, 2001 THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is earnestly seeking to reform scores of federal programs after the scandal-ridden Clinton years. But sometimes there is no substitute for a good chainsaw massacre. Such is the case with foreign aid. The U.S. is now giving $15 billion a year in foreign aid — economic and military ...
The Free-Soil Movement, Part 2 by Wendy McElroy June 1, 2001 Part 1 |Part 2 The key issue around which the free-soil debate revolved was slavery. Specifically, the question was whether slavery would be extended into the territories that were expected to seek statehood. Both anti-slavery farmers and slave-owners had been migrating into the territories for years. Each group was eager to acquire the political clout that came from having a ...
Book Review: The Burden of Bad Ideas by George Leef June 1, 2001 The Burden of Bad Ideas by Heather Mac Donald (Chicago, Ill.: Ivan R. Dee, 2000); 242 pages; $26. WE HAVE ALL HAD our share of bad ideas. Most of the time, we discard them before acting on them, but when we do act on a bad idea, we usually realize quickly that it was ...
Book Review: Regulation without the State by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2001 Regulation without the State ... The Debate Continues by John Blundell and Colin Robinson (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2000); 93 pages; $15. ALMOST 40 YEARS AGO, free-market economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman published a short book entitled Capitalism and Freedom (1962). At a time during which Keynesian economics and the popularity of the interventionist-welfare state were still on the ...
The Declaration and the Constitution by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2001 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was one of the most remarkable periods in history, not so much for the military battles that were fought but for the ideas and principles that were expressed during that time. Foremost among the documents expressing those ideas and principles are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which are inexorably intertwined. Throughout history, people have viewed ...
What Makes an American? by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 2001 WHAT MAKES SOMEONE an American as opposed to, say, an Englishman, or a Frenchman, or a German, or an Italian? Within these other countries, the answers are fairly simple. For example, a German is someone who can demonstrate that his ancestors were German-speakers originally from those areas in which Germans have ...
Kill the Death Tax by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2001 ARE WE SUPPOSED to be impressed that some of the country’s richest men want the government to continue taxing estates? I don’t see why their opinion on this matter is worth more than anyone else’s. After all, just because someone is good at making money, that doesn’t make him an authority ...
Dictatorship out of Thin Air by James Bovard May 1, 2001 FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS turn bureaucrats into dictators who need not care a whit about public health. Instead, federal agencies blindly pursue both power and publicity. The result is one absurdity after another — and scant attention for the real health threats that Americans face. On July 12, 1999, the Justice Department announced that it was suing Toyota for $58 billion ...