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TGIF: The Virtues of Competition

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When I discussed reasons to esteem the free market last week, I conspicuously left out any reference to competition. That might have seemed strange, but I did it because the subject deserves its own treatment. Differing attitudes about market competition divide people needlessly. An appreciation of what competition makes possible could prepare the ground for a convergence between libertarians and those we might call latent libertarians, that is, those who value individual liberty but don’t yet see the market as its natural home. I won’t say much here about the strictly economic functions of competition — its role, for example, in driving down prices and driving up the quality of goods and services. Competition among employers is also important for maximizing workers’ bargaining clout. This is why earlier American libertarians, like Benjamin R. Tucker and his cohorts, objected to all government limits on competition, including banking restrictions. State-fostered monopoly is the enemy of freedom and prosperity. Besides these aspects, ...

The Goal Is Freedom: Love the Market?

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Libertarians are sometimes accused of being “market fundamentalists,” and there’s a sense in which I will plead guilty to the charge (though I have multiple criticisms to offer of the Longview Institute’s “vulgar liberal” take on the subject). Libertarians certainly have great esteem for “the market” — but our esteem is rooted in reason and history, not faith. This esteem, however, is often misunderstood. As I see things, it need have nothing to do with hyper-consumerism, shallow materialism, or single-minded acquisitiveness. (This is not to condemn the desire for material comforts, of course.) Nor does it indicate a wish to see everything located within the cash nexus or the for-profit world. “The market” is better understood as much more than those things, though the boundary between it and the nonmarket parts of civil society (which include families and noncommercial associations of various kinds) may be hard to locate. Let’s just leave it at this: The market ...

The Japan Problem

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There were no issues of any real substance debated by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in the presidential campaign leading up to the recent election. With foreign wars raging, the USA PATRIOT Act and the NDAA threatening Americans’ civil liberties, the police state and surveillance state increasing, drone attacks killing foreign civilians, the drug war destroying Americans’ freedoms, the TSA out of control, and the imperial presidency in full force, it’s not like there was nothing serious to talk about. Instead we had to endure endless back-and-forth over how many billions of dollars Obamacare cuts or doesn’t cut from Medicare and how much more each candidate wants to “invest” in the space program. Sure, Romney talked about repealing Obamacare, but only because he wanted to replace it with Romneycare or Republicare, where it would fit nicely alongside of Bushcare. The reason there was no real debate is that Romney and Obama are much more alike than ...