Free Trade & Trade Policy

Anarcho-Anti-Immigrationism?

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2000

For reasons not exactly clear, the immigration issue gives some libertarians trouble. In their efforts to grapple with the issue, it’s made needlessly complicated and some highly odd “solutions” are promulgated. We’ll look at one such solution in this article. Preliminarily, we would expect that when a libertarian examines any ...

Freedom and the 21st Century

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2000

Perhaps the ultimate indictment of the government's schools is that most people think year 2000 is the 2001st year and thus the start of a new century and millennium. This is not mere quibbling. Next time someone owes you five bucks, insist that he start counting from zero, as people ...

The Benign Gap

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2000

Like clockwork, the latest study has been issued complaining about the widening gap between rich and poor. Naturally, the authors think the government must do something about it. This is a bad diagnosis and a bad prescription. The study from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is ...

Competition Is Not Freedom

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2000

Word has leaked out that the Justice Department might demand that Microsoft break up into three companies as part of any settlement agreement in the government's antitrust suit against Microsoft. The idea is that consumers would be better off with three companies competing against each other than with one ...

Free Trade without the WTO

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 1999

Demonstrators at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle protested "free-trade" negotiations between various nations of the world because, the protestors claimed, free trade harms people. I too oppose the WTO but for a different reason: I favor free trade, not only because people should be free to ...

False Alternatives

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 1999

It's a classic false alternative: One side says trade policy should be made democratically by each nation. The other side says it should be made by a secretive international bureaucracy, the World Trade Organization. Both are wrong. Trade policy should be made by and for each individual. That's free trade. Free trade ...

None Dare Call It Extortion

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 1999

What do you call it when one person threatens violence against another unless he obeys? How about "extortion"? Consider this sentence from the New York Times on Christmas day: "Brandishing new data showing that the drug industry earns higher profits and pays lower taxes than most other industries, White ...

Imports are Good!

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 1999

As champions and opponents of the World Trade Organization (WTO) descended on Seattle, it would have been nice if they at least had their premises correct: Imports are benefits. Exports are costs. That is the opposite of what most people inside and outside the meeting hall believe. They insist on ...

Oh, Go Away Already

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 1999

It's unseemly for people who have never created wealth to tell those who have how to spend it. Especially when they do so while sitting around the Villa La Pietra overlooking Florence. The Associated Press described the setting as "a spectacular 14th-century Renaissance palace with frescoed ceilings." Perfect for ...

The Lynching of Microsoft

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 1999

Reading Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's findings of fact in the Microsoft case, you can't help but conclude that the software company wouldn't be in trouble if it didn't make life so easy for consumers. That, of course, is at odds with the judge's explicit conclusion that Bill Gates has stifled innovation ...

The Art of Plunder

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 1999

Now that the controversy surrounding the art exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum has calmed down, it's a good time for some sober reflection. To recap, the museum, which is subsidized with taxpayer money, is hosting an exhibit that includes among other things, a painting purportedly of the Virgin Mary adorned ...

Free Wal-Mart!

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 1999

In its untiring effort to lead the United States to fascism with all possible dispatch, the California state legislature has enacted a law to save its unsuspecting citizens from groceries at Wal-Mart! The bill, which awaits the governor's signature, would make it impossible for Wal-Mart and other so-called big-box retail ...