Free Market

The Letter That CEOs Ought to Be Writing

by Laurence M. Vance October 10, 2019

The mass shootings in August at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and at a bar in Dayton, Ohio, prompted the CEOs of more than a hundred large and small corporations to write a letter to the members of the U.S. Senate about “a public health crisis that demands urgent action” — gun violence. Says the

Free-Market Liberalism vs. Corrupted “Capitalism” and La-La Land Socialism

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2019

One of the issues that confronts the friends of freedom is how best to make the case for liberty as a political idea and ideal and as a policy proposal.  A central element in that is making sure that we know what it is that we are advocating and why, and what it is that we oppose and why. ...

America’s Economic Commissar of Trade

by Richard M. Ebeling June 14, 2019

Since taking office in January 2017, President Donald Trump seems to have declared or threatened economic war on many of America’s leading economic trading partners, including China, the European Union, and most recently Mexico. Two things stand out in all this: first, he presumes that international trade is a zero-sum game in which if the U.S. wins, some other ...

Free Market Liberalism Is Needed More Than Ever

by Richard M. Ebeling April 17, 2019

The famous New York Yankees baseball player and manager Yogi Berra is credited with the saying “It's déjà vu all over again.” He is also credited with claiming, “I really didn’t say everything I said.” Never were both of these truer than in our era of reborn defenses of and demands for more government intervention, redistribution, and planning. Many of us assumed, or at ...

The Libertarian Angle: How to End Poverty (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation April 5, 2019

Is there a way to end poverty? Actually, much poverty has already been eliminated. FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger and Citadel professor Richard M. Ebeling tell you how. Go to the podcast.

The Brexit Dilemma: Markets or Politics?

by Richard M. Ebeling December 19, 2018

For more than two years now, the United Kingdom and the European Union have been in a crisis mode over how and under what terms the U.K. will leave the EU, following the June 2016 referendum on Britain’s formal departure from the Europe-wide organization. The end of March 2019 marks the deadline for the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European ...

Businesses That Should Not Exist

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2018

Among other things, libertarians — and even most conservatives — are known for extolling the virtues of capitalism, the free market, commerce, trade, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship. They are generally defenders of business as long as there is an absence of protectionism, crony capitalism, and corporate welfare. Even so, from a libertarian perspective, there are still some businesses that ...

The Roots of Voluntary Exchange Lie in the Middle East

by Nima Sanandaji December 1, 2018

It is today commonly believed that free markets and free-market ideology are new Western inventions. In my book The Birthplace of Capitalism: The Middle East, I challenge that notion by pointing out that enterprises, financial institutions, market-based economies, and the intellectual support for economic freedom evolved millennia ago in the Middle East. The book (which is awaiting its international ...

Liberal Capitalism as the Ideology of Freedom and Moderation

by Richard M. Ebeling November 7, 2018

Nowadays, many along the political spectrum seem to agree that America increasingly has become a polarized society. Ideological and public policy discourse has been gravitating more toward the extremes: progressives and the Democratic Party with a more explicitly socialist rhetoric and proposed government agenda, and conservatives and Republicans who increasingly appear to be moving in the direction of populist, ...

A Real Agenda for a Renewal of Free Market Liberalism

by Richard M. Ebeling September 20, 2018

To mark its 175th birthday, the highly regarded and widely read British news magazine The Economist published a “manifesto” in its September 15, 2018, issue outlining its agenda for a renewed and relevant political and economic liberalism for the 21st century. But can it restore the liberal ideal at a time when liberalism is under attack from so many ...

The Market Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism

by Richard M. Ebeling September 6, 2018

Warnings are frequently heard nowadays that democracy is currently under threat. And with a demise of democracy will come a loss of liberty. Indeed, democracy and freedom are frequently heralded as being synonyms. An important question, however, is, What do these concepts mean, and are they in fact synonymous? A useful place to start is with a famous lecture delivered ...

Private Government in Genoa

by Lawrence M. Ludlow August 1, 2018

Genoa’s Freedom: Entrepreneurship, Republicanism, and the Spanish Atlantic by Matteo Salonia (Lexington Books, 2017); 214 pages. If the city of Genoa had advertised for security services in the 15th century, the job description might have looked like this: Security-Services Wanted Entrepreneurs in the city of Genoa recently fired the king of France and seek a replacement to provide ...