The Biggest Obstacle to Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger November 5, 2014 Expressing their obvious contempt for the overall situation in America, voters played their latest game of musical chairs by putting Republicans back in charge of Congress. It won’t make any difference at all. That’s because the Republicans who have been installed into power are as statist as the Democrats they are replacing. What really matters with respect to a free society is not a new set of statists to replace an old set of statists. That’s one of the things that distinguish libertarians from statists. Libertarians understand that the problem in the United States is a structural one, not one involving getting “better” people into public office. What is that structural problem? Libertarians refer to it as the welfare-warfare state. It involves enormous apparatuses that, many decades ago, statists attached onto our original governmental system in America. The welfare-state apparatus is based on the concept of mandatory charity. The federal government forces people to be good and caring toward others. The income tax ...
Congressional Elections Are a Big Waste of Money by Jacob G. Hornberger November 3, 2014 Like other congressional elections, millions of dollars have been spent on electoral campaigns in the run-up to the elections tomorrow. It’s one horrific waste of time, energy, and resources for the citizenry. Whoever wins a seat in Congress — Democrat or Republican — nothing fundamental will change. We all know that. That’s because both Democrats and Republicans believe in the welfare-warfare state system under which we all live. The congressional fights are over who is going to control the system. Imagine that we still had slavery here in the United States. Today's Democrat and Republican congressional candidates would not be discussing and debating whether we should have such a system. They would be fighting over which side was going to be in charge of the system. The Democrat candidate might be calling for helping the slaves by forcing slave-owners to pay them a nominal wage and provide them with shorter work days. His Republican opponent might be calling for mandatory state ...
The Calling: How Cronyism Worsens Income Inequality (and Freed Markets Reduce It) by Steven Horwitz October 30, 2014 I recently gave an introductory Public Choice talk sponsored by Students for Liberty at the University of Ottawa. The next speaker was my friend Anne Rathbone Bradley, who was Skyping in from Washington. Anne gave a terrific talk about cronyism and rent-seeking that nicely complemented many of the points I’d made. But one of the side issues she raised really stuck with me, and I want to expand on it. Anne connected cronyism (I hesitate to call it “crony capitalism”), rent-seeking, and income inequality in a way I hadn’t quite thought about before. The key to the connection is to realize some important truths about the political process. The first truth is that cronyism is no accident. It is no accident that the U.S. economy has increasingly become one in which your connections to political power matter more for your ability to increase your wealth than does producing a product or service that consumers wish to buy. We are becoming what ...
TGIF: The State Is No Friend of the Worker by Sheldon Richman October 24, 2014 The election season is upon us, and we’re hearing the usual political promises about raising wages. Democrats pledge to raise the minimum wage and assure equal pay for equal work for men and women. Republicans usually oppose those things, but their explanations are typically lame. (“The burden on small business would be increased too much.”) Some Republicans endorse raising ...
How Laws Are Passed, Maintained, and Changed by George Leef October 1, 2014 Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers: The Economic Engine of Political Change by Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. Lopez (Stanford Economics and Finance 2013), 209 pages. Have you ever wondered why democracies so often generate public policies that are wasteful and unjust? Have you asked why such policies persist over long periods, even when they are known to ...
The Calling: Libertarians, Victim Blaming, and Structural Racism by Steven Horwitz August 28, 2014 The events in Ferguson, Missouri have opened up yet another national conversation on race. This time, however, something is different. The images of a mostly white police department dressed in military outfits using military weaponry and vehicles while attempting to control a largely black crowd protesting the killing of an unarmed black man by a white police officer has ...
Three Malignant Tumors on the Body Politic by Jacob G. Hornberger August 22, 2014 As everyone knows, no matter how healthy a person might be, cancerous tumors, if permitted to remain in the body, will ultimately bring about the person’s demise. Depending on the size and aggressiveness of the cancer, the end might occur sooner or it might come later, but it will inevitably come. The same holds true for the body politic. Once ...
Böhm-Bawerk: Austrian Economist Who Said “No” to Big Government by Richard M. Ebeling August 11, 2014 We live at a time when politicians and bureaucrats only know one public policy: more and bigger government. Yet, there was a time when even those who served in government defended limited and smaller government. One of the greatest of these died one hundred years ago on August 27, 1914, the Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk.Böhm-Bawerk is most famous ...
Should the Export-Import Bank Be Reauthorized? by Laurence M. Vance August 7, 2014 The Export-Import Bank is up for reauthorization again. Democrats and Republicans in Congress are divided against each other and among themselves as to reforms that should be imposed on the bank, and, to a lesser extent, whether the bank should be reauthorized at all. But before looking at the question of whether the Export-Import Bank should be reauthorized, we should ...
Mr. President: Please Mind Your Own Business by Richard M. Ebeling August 4, 2014 Dear President Obama, For nearly six years, now, you have declared your intention and desire of being my Nanny-in-Chief. Your original campaign slogan of “Hope and Change” was really a promise of “Control and Command.” Well, Mr. President, I have a request: Mind your own business. Let me start out with some simple questions. How do you know what is right ...
Leave Should Be Left to the Market by Laurence M. Vance July 15, 2014 Democrats, liberals, progressives, and the White House Summit on Working Families don’t think the Family and Medical Leave Act goes far enough. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was passed in 1993 by the 103rd Congress — the only Congress with a Democratic majority that Bill Clinton had. The legislation (H.R.1) ...
Chronic Minimum-Wage Ignorance by Jacob G. Hornberger July 9, 2014 I find it absolutely amazing that there are still people who support the concept of a government-established minimum wage. There are plenty of statist programs and policies that are faulty and destructive, but minimum-wage laws rank near the top of statist programs whose fallaciousness and harm are easiest to see. It’s just fascinating that there are still people in life ...
