Freedom Daily Archive

Freedom, Private Property, and the Environment

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 1993

Unfortunately, most Americans believe that the only way to preserve our environment is through public ownership of the means of production. "If there were no environmental threat," the refrain goes, "we would favor a capitalist system for America. But since our environment is at stake, we have no choice but ...

Living a Life of the Lie, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In 1979, the Czech playwright and dissident Vaclav Havel illegally published his famous essay, "The Power of the Powerless." He analyzed the nature of the totalitarian system and the role of the individual in it, both as victim and supporter. That the Marxian and socialist promises and prophesies were unfilled ...

Liberty and the Environment: Freedom Protects, Government Destroys

by Jarret B. Wollstein May 1, 1993

All of us want a safer, less-polluted environment. Increasingly, people throughout the world have become aware that we are damaging our environment in many ways, harming ourselves and threatening the welfare of future generations. In South America and Asia, rain forests are being destroyed at the rate of over 30 acres a minute. In 50 years, these forests could be ...

Property Rights Better Than Bureaucrats

by Chuck Olson May 1, 1993

Just as centralized economic planning has failed, centralized ecological planning will fail. The solution to our environmental problems will not be found in more government agencies, bureaucrats, and arbitrary regulations. Rather, we need an approach which relies on individual responsibility and its concomitants, individual liberty and private-property rights. Traditional economists point ...

The United States Forest Service: The World’s Largest Socialized Road-Building Company

by Michael Peterson May 1, 1993

The old joke goes that if all economists were laid end to end, they still couldn't reach a conclusion. However, if you did the same to all the roads the Forest Service plans to build and reconstruct by 2030, you would reach the conclusion that such activity is ludicrous, and you would travel to the moon and back and ...

Book Review: Welfare Economics and Externalities in an Open Ended Universe

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 1993

Welfare Economics and Externalities in an Open Ended Universe: A Modern Austrian Perspective by Roy E. Cordato (Boston: Kluwer Academic Press, 1992); 140 pages. Classical liberals and libertarians have traditionally argued that government should be limited to certain essential functions for the sake of social order: police protection against domestic criminals, military force for security against foreign aggression, and a court ...

Highway to Collapse: Spending on Infrastructure

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 1993

Bill Clinton believes that spending on infrastructure will bring jobs and prosperity to America — and, in the process, finally prove, after sixty years of failure, that the welfare-state, managed-economy way of life can be a success after all. But spending on infrastructure is just another highway to collapse. It will only result in higher taxes, more impoverishment, and ...

The Failure of Socialism and Lessons for America, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 In the early 1920s, Ludwig von Mises pointed out that "socialism is the watchword of our day. The socialist idea dominates the modem spirit. The masses approve of it; it has set its seal upon our time. When history comes to tell our story it will write above the chapter, 'The Epoch of Socialism."' Since ...

The Importance of Tools

by Karl Hess April 1, 1993

It is the pompous delusion of politicians that they significantly improve the way the world works. Nonsense. Through taxation, rules, regulations, and war, politicians historically have destroyed people's lives and obstructed their economic progress. The real work of the world — the way we live our daily lives — ...

The Great Multiplier

by Henry Grady Weaver April 1, 1993

Through foresight, imagination, and individual initiative, man develops tools and facilities which expand his efforts and enable him to produce things which would not otherwise be possible. This is an outstanding difference between man and animal, just as it is an outstanding difference between civilization and barbarism. Progress toward better living would never have been possible, except through the development ...

Book Review: Russia’s Secret Rulers

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 1993

Russia's Secret Rulers: How the Government and the Criminal Mafia Exercise Their Power by Lev Timofeyev (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992); 177 pages; $21.00. The Soviet Union was a harsh taskmaster for those who were interested in truth and were daring enough to convey the truths they had learned. Lev Timofeyev graduated as an economist from the Moscow Institute of ...

Freedom of Education

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 1993

What if, one hundred years ago, the American people had decided to amend the Constitution to provide a system of public churches in towns across America. Imagine the following conversation in 1993: Advocate of Religious Freedom: We have a terrible problem with the public-church system. It was a big mistake to set up public churching in America a hundred years ...