Freedom Daily Archive

Misreading the Industrial Revolution

by Lawrence W. Reed September 1, 1993

Those of us who are advocates of the spontaneous order of an unfettered market are forever stomping out the fires of fallacious reasoning and anticapitalistic bias. It seems that as we set one record straight, opponents of the market manage to pervert ten others. We spend as much time explaining ...

The Environment Since the Industrial Revolution

by Harry Lee Smith September 1, 1993

The unprecedented improvements in the quality of human life during the past 200 years have been the direct result of the individual freedom, technology, industry, and economic growth that began to flower during the Industrial Revolution. The dramatic increase in life expectancy, and hence population, since the Industrial Revolution can be attributed to what may be called "Old Environmentalism" — ...

Facts about the “Industrial Revolution”

by Ludwig von Mises September 1, 1993

Socialist and interventionist authors assert that the history of modern industrialism and especially the history of the British "Industrial Revolution" provide an empirical verification of the "realistic" or "institutional" doctrine and utterly explode the "abstract" dogmatism of the economists. The economists flatly deny that labor unions and government prolabor legislation can and did lastingly benefit the whole class of wage ...

Book Review: Mises

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1993

Mises: An Annotated Bibliography compiled by Bettina Bien Greaves and Robert W. McGee (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1993); 391 pages; $14.95. In his 1894 book, The Tyranny of Socialism, the French classical liberal Yves Guyot admitted that "we, who are endeavoring to recall the principles of equality before the law and the guarantees of individual liberty, are ...

Serfs on the Plantation, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 The welfare state was collapsing under its own weight in the later stages of the Roman Empire. Those who were on the dole were demanding more dole. Those who were paying the taxes were demanding lower taxes. The authorities were in a quandary. If they promised ...

Free Trade, Managed Trade and the State, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 "The principle of free trade is non-interference," wrote the English classical economist Nassau Senior in 1828. "It is to suffer every man to employ his industry in the manner which he thinks most advantageous, without a pretense on the part of the ...

Compounding the Somali Tragedy

by Doug Bandow August 1, 1993

The post-Cold War is proving to be a disorderly place. Conflicts restrained by the superpowers are now breaking out all over — in Africa, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. More wars could eventually explode in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Tragic those these conflicts are, they need not ...

Immigration and Somalia

by Gregory F. Rehmke August 1, 1993

Calls are rising to send American troops into the cities, towns and villages of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. Perhaps not far in the future, Russia and Ukraine will collapse, leading to calls for American troops to rush in and save the day. But is it possible that there is a better way to save the world? There is a better ...

The Most Dreaded Enemy of Liberty

by James Madison August 1, 1993

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, ...

Book Review: Second Thoughts

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1993

Second Thoughts: Myths and Morals of U.S. Economic History edited by Donald N. McCloskey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); 208 pages; $24.95. In his introduction to the 1954 book Capitalism and the Historians , Friedrich A. Hayek pointed out that "past experience is the foundation on which our beliefs about ...

Serfs on the Plantation, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 In ancient Rome, the political authorities used three primary means to discourage or quell rebellions among the citizenry. First, they would give more welfare to the people, thereby making them more docile and content. Second, they would create foreign crises by which they could rally the ...

Living the Life of a Lie, Part 3

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The greatest myth that has emerged out of the end of the Cold War is that a philosophy of freedom has triumphed over an ideology of totalitarianism. The post-World War II period was, in fact, merely a conflict between differing forms of the statist ideal. On both sides of the ...