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Pinochet’s Chicago Boys versus Freedom

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Ever since the U.S.-supported military coup in Chile that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power in 1973, American and Chilean conservatives have extolled the economic policies that the Pinochet regime brought to Chile. The policies, which conservatives have long described as “free-market,” originated within a group of Chilean economists known as the Chicago Boys, who accepted governmental positions in the Pinochet regime. The economic policies introduced by the Chicago Boys helped revitalize the Chilean economy, which has long been a source of pride for the conservative movement in general and the Chicago Boys in particular. However, there are problematic aspects of what the Chicago Boys did, not only with respect to their service to one of the most brutal dictatorships in history but also with respect to what they describe as the free-market policies that the Pinochet dictatorship introduced into Chile. Pinochet was not a benevolent dictator. Immediately after assuming power, his national-security state forces began rounding up people and herding ...

We Don’t Compromise

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Discovering libertarianism was one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me. It actually changed the course of my life. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer. Whenever my elementary schoolteachers would ask us to write an essay about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I would write that I wanted to become a lawyer. I ended up getting a law degree and practicing law in partnership with my father in my hometown of Laredo, Texas. I liked the practice of law but once I discovered libertarianism, it became my passion and I sensed that life might have something different in store for me. I immediately put aside my books on direct examination, cross examination, and jury argumentation and felt driven to read books by Leonard Read, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Frederic Bastiat, and other libertarians. In 1987, after 12 years ...

Milton Friedman and Conservatives: Wrong on Education

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Once upon a time, some conservatives used to call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education. Lamentably, conservatives today celebrate when a “free-market advocate” like multimillionaire Betsy DeVos is appointed U.S. Secretary of Education, and they get terribly excited when she speaks at conservative conferences. Meanwhile, even while conservatives continue to pronounce their allegiance to their favorite mantra -- “free enterprise, private property, limited government” — they continue to embrace not only public schooling itself but also their favorite public-schooling fix-it program, school vouchers. Over the years, conservatives have developed various labels for their voucher program: a “free-market approach to education,” “free enterprise in education,” or “school choice.” They have chosen those labels to make themselves and their supporters feel good about supporting vouchers. But the labeling has always been false and fraudulent. Vouchers are nothing more than a socialist program, no different in principle from public schooling itself. The term “free enterprise” means a system in which a private enterprise ...