Freedom Daily Archive

Book Review: From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2000

From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays by Peter Bauer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); 153 pages; $24.95. FREE-MARKET ECONOMIST Peter T. Bauer is 85 years old this year. During the 55 years since the end of the Second World War, Bauer has been one of the most articulate and insightful critics of economic planning and government intervention in the ...

Sighting in the Second Amendment

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2000

WE SHOULD NOT let the hoopla associated with the Million Mom March cause us to lose sight of the real purpose and meaning behind the Second Amendment: the ability to protect ourselves from the tyranny of our own government. Virtually all the arguments in the gun-control debate have revolved around gun violence in American society. The proponents of registration, licensing, ...

Reform Social Security … or Repeal It?

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2000

WITH THE presidential campaign season here, the quadrennial debate over Social Security has begun. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush is calling for Social Security reform. He says that people should have the right to have their Social Security funds invested in the stock market. Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore says ...

Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century: A Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Ladies and gentlemen of the press, America is entering the 21st century as still one of the greatest nations in the world. We have had a booming economy for most of the last two decades that has created tens of millions of ...

Government: Creator of Uncertainty

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2000

THE STOCK MARKET tumbles of recent months are a reminder that when it comes to economic phenomena, subjectivism reigns. One of the pillars of the Austrian school of economics is the principle that in explaining economic events, objective entities and quantities in themselves dont count. What counts is what human beings make of them. As F.A. Hayek wrote, It is ...

Clinton’s Fair-Trade Fraud

by James Bovard July 1, 2000

PRESIDENT CLINTON prides himself on calling for “free and fair trade” with foreigners every chance he gets. However, what is the Clinton administration’s idea of fair trade? Few things better illustrate the political corruption of the idea of fairness than the abuses of the U.S. anti-dumping laws. Clinton’s Commerce Department found pretexts to condemn foreigners for unfair trade in 98 ...

FDR — The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 10

by Ralph Raico July 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Table of Contents When it comes to the question of money, mankind ...

Book Review: Trust on Trial

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2000

Trust on Trial: How the Microsoft Case Is Reframing the Rules of Competition by Richard B. McKenzie (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2000); 281 pages; $26. IN HIS 1942 BOOK, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph A. Schumpeter argued, “The fundamental impulse that set and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or ...

The Rule of Terror

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2000

THE HORRIFYING SEIZURE of Elián Gonzalez is one more reflection of the depths of depravity to which the U.S. government has plunged in our lifetime. The episode also reflects the extent to which all too many Americans continue to deny the reality that beneath the velvet glove of the benign welfare state lies the iron fist of a brutal, ...

Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century: A Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 The threshold of the 21st century, the American people are once again faced with having to choose a president of the United States. A hundred years ago, when the 20th century began, the issue of who was ...

Education and the Presidential Race

by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2000

THE REPUBLICANS, as the old saying goes, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Gov. George W. Bush demonstrated that truism when he clinched the presidential nomination and told the nation that education would be at the center of his campaign. Over and over he has said that a Bush presidency would “reform education” and make sure every ...

Census Bureau: A Threat to Freedom

by James Bovard June 1, 2000

THERE ARE three certainties in life — death, taxes and the continuation of the Census Bureau’s proud tradition of keeping information it collects about individuals strictly private.” So announces the Census Bureau’s web page, seeking to assure Americans that they have nothing to fear by opening their lives to the prying of this year’s census. Regrettably, after seven years of ...