The Case for Monetary Freedom and Free Banking by Richard M. Ebeling December 11, 2014 There has been no greater threat to life, liberty, and property throughout the ages than government. Even the most violent and brutal private individuals have been able to inflict only a mere fraction of the harm and destruction that have been caused by the use of power by political authorities. The pursuit of legal plunder, to use Frédéric Bastiat’s well-chosen phrase, has been behind all the major economic and political disasters that have befallen mankind throughout history. Government Spending Equals Plundering People We often forget the fundamental truth that governments have nothing to spend or redistribute that they do not first take from society’s producers. The fiscal history of mankind is nothing but a long, uninterrupted account of the methods governments have devised for seizing the income and wealth of their citizens and subjects. Parallel to that same sad history must be an account of all the attempts by the victims of government’s legal plunder to devise counter-methods to prevent or at least limit the ...
No Compromise Is the ONLY Way to Achieve Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger December 8, 2014 There is one way — and only one way — to achieve the free society: by strictly hewing to libertarian principles. While compromising libertarian principles might seem to be a more palatable and more practical way to achieve freedom, nothing could be further from the truth. In response to our end-of-year letter seeking people’s financial support for The Future of Freedom Foundation, a person wrote me and told me that he has no reservations whatsoever about compromising libertarian principles and embracing reform measures. He told me, therefore, that he had no intention of donating to The Future of Freedom Foundation. My response to him was very simple: If it is reform of the welfare-warfare state that you want for your life, then go for it. But just don’t pretend that by supporting reform, you are achieving the free society. After all, if all that you’re fighting for is reform, then the most you’re going to get is reform. The only way to actually ...
Leave Us All Alone! We Can’t Breathe! by Jacob G. Hornberger December 5, 2014 The last words out of the mouth of strangling victim Eric Garner are actually a metaphor for how libertarians feel about the entire welfare-warfare state under which modern-day Americans have been born and raised. Don’t his words express precisely how we libertarians feel? Leave us alone, we say to the state. Get out of our faces. Get out of our lives. You’re suffocating us. You’re killing us — literally, spiritually, financially, and economically. Thomas Jefferson described this phenomenon in the Declaration of Independence: His government was sending “swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” There is hardly any part of our lives that government officials aren’t involved in. They just won’t leave us alone. Drug laws. Economic regulations. Income taxation. IRS audits. Asset forfeitures. Home raids. Secret surveillance. Draft registration. Permits and licenses. Minimum-wage laws. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Terrorist blowback. Checkpoints. Perpetual crises and chaos. It never stops. Just leave us alone! Go away! You’re killing us, ...
TGIF: Tackling Straw Men Is Easier than Critiquing Libertarianism by Sheldon Richman December 5, 2014 Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I think it behooves a critic to understand what he’s criticizing. I realize that tackling straw men is much easier than dealing with challenging arguments, but that’s no excuse for the shoddy work we find in John Edward Terrell’s New York Times post, “Evolution and the American Myth of the Individual.” In his ...
Hayek’s Warning: The Social Engineer’s Pretense of Knowledge by Richard M. Ebeling December 2, 2014 Forty years ago, on December 11, 1974, Austrian economist, Friedrich A. Hayek, formally received that year’s Nobel Prize in Economics at the official ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden. He delivered a lecture called, “The Pretense of Knowledge,” which forcefully challenged all those who believe that government has the wisdom or ability to successfully plan the economic affairs of society. His primary ...
Bastiat on the Socialization of Wealth by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2014 That … veil which is spread before the eyes of the ordinary man, which even the attentive observer does not always succeed in casting aside, prevents us from seeing the most marvelous of all social phenomena: real wealth constantly passing from the domain of private property into the communal domain. Wealth marvelously passing from the private to the communal domain? ...
The Austrian Economist Who Should Have Received the Nobel Prize by Richard M. Ebeling October 29, 2014 On October 13th, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced in Stockholm, Sweden, with French economist, Jean Tirole, the recipient for his work on developing models to better assist governments in regulating private enterprise. A couple of weeks earlier, Reuters news agency had reported that the Austrian School economist, Israel M. Kirzner, was on the short list for ...
My Talk on Immigration at Northwood University by Jacob G. Hornberger October 28, 2014 Last night I had the good fortune of sharing libertarian perspectives with students at Northwood University, one of the few colleges in the country where students receive a great education into free-market principles. My talk, which was delivered live on the Internet, was part of Northwood’s “Freedom Week,” which brought together both students and the general public to hear ...
TGIF: Leonard P. Liggio (1933–2014) by Sheldon Richman October 17, 2014 I lost one of my favorite teachers this week, as did so many other libertarians, not to mention the freedom movement as a whole. Leonard P. Liggio, 81, died after a period of declining health. Leonard was a major influence on my worldview during the nearly 40 years I knew him. While I had not seen him much in ...
TGIF: A Foreign Policy By and For Knaves by Sheldon Richman October 10, 2014 David Hume (1711-1776) was no hardcore libertarian, but he was a provocative thinker and a key figure in the development of liberalism. Hume helped make the Scottish Enlightenment the important period it was. He also can be fun to read. Observe this from his essay “Of the Independency of Parliament”: Political writers have established it as a maxim, ...
Celebrating The Work Of Nobel Prize Winning Economist, F.A. Hayek by Richard M. Ebeling October 8, 2014 Forty years ago, on October 9, 1974, the Nobel Prize committee announced that the co-recipient of that year’s award for economics was the Austrian economist, Friedrich A. Hayek. Never was there a more deserving recognition for one of the truly great free market thinkers of modern times. The Nobel committee recognized his contributions, including “pioneering work in the theory of ...
One of the Best Lectures I’ve Ever Seen by Jacob G. Hornberger October 3, 2014 Yesterday, I was treated to one of the best lectures I’ve ever seen. It was delivered by Israel Kirzner, an Austrian economist who is emeritus professor of economics at New York University, where he taught for many years. Kirzner’s lecture was entitled “Hayek, the Nobel Prize, and the Modern Austrian School of Economics.” The talk was sponsored by the Mercatus ...
