Free Market

Food Safety: A Market Solution

by Paul Schwennesen May 1, 2013

The FDA is trumpeting, with unseemly giddiness, sweeping implementation of new rules within the now thoroughly moldered food-safety bill, passed two long years ago. Like any dish served past its prime, this one smells a bit off. As a producer in the ascendant food renaissance (defined by a sudden respect for all things small and local) I’ve noticed a curious ...

Book Review: What Reality Teaches Us

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2013

No, They Can’t: Why Government Fails — But Individuals Succeed by John Stossel (New York: Threshold Editions, 2012), 324 pages. John Stossel is the well-known host of Stossel on Fox Business. A graduate of Princeton, he has won an incredible 19 Emmy awards, is a five-time honoree for excellence in consumer reporting, and is a New York Times bestselling ...

TGIF: The Myth of Market Failure

by Sheldon Richman April 5, 2013

In the language of economics, a market failure is, as David Friedman writes, “a situation where each individual correctly chooses the action that best accomplishes his objectives, yet the result is worse, in terms of those same objectives, than if everyone had done something else.” As a rule, the pursuit of individual good in the market ...

Market Manipulations

by Tim Kelly March 25, 2013

With all the government meddling in the economy, it is virtually impossible to sort out free-market functions from political manipulations. It is also impossible to predict the economy’s future performance with any degree of accuracy. There are simply too many variables, and with most economic data being manipulated to serve political agendas, the chances of getting an accurate picture ...

Right-to-Work Laws and the Modern Classical-Liberal Tradition

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2013

It’s not widely known, but an earlier generation of libertarians condemned so-called right-to-work laws as anti-market. For example, Milton Friedman, in Capitalism and Freedom, compared right-to-work to anti-discrimination laws. Ayn Rand also opposed right-to-work laws. The Spring 1966 issue of the libertarian student-run journal New Individualist Review carried Prof. Hirschel Kasper’s article “What’s Wrong with Right-to-Work Laws.” NIR was ...

Women, Discrimination, and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance January 2, 2013

For the first time in its history, South Korea has elevated a woman to the office of president. Newly elected Park Geun-hye is the daughter of the president and dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled the country from 1961 until his assassination in 1979. During her presidential campaign, she pledged to increase government aid to single parents, expand maternity and paternity ...

TGIF: Right-to-Work Laws and the Modern Classical-Liberal Tradition

by Sheldon Richman December 14, 2012

It’s not widely known, but an earlier generation of libertarians condemned so-called right-to-work laws as anti-market. For example, Milton Friedman, in Capitalism and Freedom, compared right-to-work to anti-discrimination laws. Ayn Rand also opposed right-to-work laws. The Spring 1966 issue of the libertarian student-run journal New Individualist Review carried Professor Hirschel Kasper’s article “What’s Wrong with ...

Two Extraordinary African-American Entrepreneurs

by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2012

As the 19th century neared its end, two African-American women became rivals as they became millionaires in the beauty-care industry. Annie Turnbo Pope Malone and Madam (Sarah) C.J. Walker were wildly successful entrepreneurs at a time when both blacks and women were marginalized by society. Annie and Sarah broke racial and sexual barriers; they created economic independence for an ...

Look for the Union Liable

by Wendy McElroy November 27, 2012

Unions are now more empowered and more desperate. They feel empowered because a radically pro-union president has been elected for a second term. An Investor’s Business Daily headline (Nov. 21) proclaimed, “With Obama Win, Big Labor Feels Its Oats.” The article explained, Unions are feeling their oats after the re-election of President Obama. It’s comparable to the perception ...

Thanksgiving, Socialism, and the Free Market (2008)

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 22, 2012

This article was originally published in November 2008. As Barack Obama prepares to assume the presidency, it would be appropriate today to remember that the original Thanksgiving celebrated the demise of the “spread-the-wealth” economic system that the colonists at Plymouth Rock initially established. The story ...

The Goal Is Freedom: Love the Market?

by Sheldon Richman November 16, 2012

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 ...

Don’t Call for an Ambulance

by Laurence M. Vance August 21, 2012

The two recent high-profile and highly deadly shootings in the United States have been the occasion of much dialogue about “gun control.” Liberals, predictably, have generally called for more and stricter gun-control laws. Conservatives, to their credit, have generally argued to the contrary (even though they have accepted decades of various federal gun-control laws that make a mockery of the ...