Daily Articles

Lockdowns as a Political Tragedy of the Commons

by Richard M. Ebeling November 4, 2020

Several of the leading European countries are now in the process of implementing a second wave of social and economic lockdowns in the face of new and a rising number of cases of the coronavirus. After bringing their societies to near total halts in the spring of 2020 with lockdowns and shutdowns in the name of “flattening the curve” ...

Libertarianism and Boycotts

by Wendy McElroy November 3, 2020

“There oughta be a law” has become the default position for those seeking social change, and mainstream libertarianism is beginning to forget effective non-legal, non-violent strategies from the past. A powerful one is the boycott. The term “boycott” was coined in 1880 by the Irish Home Rule leader Charles Stewart Parnell to describe a campaign of social and economic ostracism ...

Six Social Security Scams

by Laurence M. Vance November 2, 2020

An article titled “Six Scams that Prey on the Elderly” that appeared on Kiplinger.com last year has recently been reposted on Pocket. Although there is a Social Security scam that the author (Miriam Cross) mentions as one of the six, the fact that Social Security itself is a scam is never ...

COVID-19 and Liberty

by Christine Smith October 30, 2020

If there's one thing we've learned about the public's understanding and practice of liberty from the pandemic, it's that some when pushed to the brink will rebel. Sometimes, for humans to learn, takes a loss of liberty to awaken them. Currently, millions want their states to "open up" while local governments say "no." People lost much during this pandemic: livelihoods, freedom ...

Unmasking Paul Krugman’s Misrepresentation of Ayn Rand

by Richard M. Ebeling October 28, 2020

“How Many Americans Will Ayn Rand Kill?” When New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s article for October 22, 2020 was first posted on the internet that was the title of his piece. Someone at The Times must have had second thoughts about it, because now if you download Krugman’s piece the title has been changed to,

Something Wicked This Way Comes

by John W. Whitehead October 27, 2020

Every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination. — Philip Roth, novelist Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the ...

The Tortured Legacy of the Mexican-American War, Part 6

by Danny Sjursen October 26, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4  | Part 5 | Part 6 But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.… the fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.… She might become the dictatress of the world.

Government Policies Have Worsened the Coronavirus Crisis

by Richard M. Ebeling October 22, 2020

Few would disagree that we have been and are living through some unprecedented times in 2020. A global pandemic, government-imposed and mandated lockdowns and shutdowns of much of the world’s economic activities and social interactions, and total government debts that cumulatively are almost equal to the global economy’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But while comparisons are being made between the ...

A Four-Point Plan for Government

by Laurence M. Vance October 21, 2020

In July 2010, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI), launched the “If You See Something, Say Something” national campaign to raise “public awareness of the indicators of terrorism and terrorism-related crime, as well as the importance of reporting suspicious activity to state and local ...

We Are All Victims of the Deep State’s Con Game

by John W. Whitehead October 20, 2020

We’re run by the Pentagon, we’re run by Madison Avenue, we’re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy… We all live in a ...

The Political Circus and the Court

by Richard M. Ebeling October 16, 2020

Much of the news and social media chatter following the vice-presidential debate on October 7, 2020 seemed to focus on two events during the 90-minute exchange: Kamala Harris’s unwillingness to say whether she and Joe Biden would or would not try to “pack” the Supreme Court with justices to assure voting majorities for “their side,” and the dark colored ...

Trade Deficit Baloney

by Laurence M. Vance October 14, 2020

Donald Trump campaigned on a pledge to bring down America’s trade deficits. Yet, in spite of all his tariffs, the trade deficit is higher than when he took office. Is that a cause for concern? Commerce is mentioned only twice in the Constitution. The word trade does not appear at all. In Article I, Section 8, Congress is given the ...