Freedom Daily Archive

Individual Liberty and Civil Society

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 1993

In 1819, the French classical liberal, Benjamin Constant, delivered a lecture in Paris entitled, "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Modems." He drew his audience's attention to the fact that in the world of ancient Greece, "the aim of the ancients was the sharing of power among the citizens of the fatherland: this is ...

The Speculator As Hero

by Victor Niederhoffer February 1, 1993

I am a speculator. I own seats on the Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange. When my daughters ask me if my job is as important as the butcher's, the doctor's or the scientist's, I answer that the speculator is a hero, and has been throughout history. Some speculators are discoverers like Christopher Columbus, creators like Henry Ford, ...

The Slaughterhouse Cases

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1993

1869, the Louisiana legislature enacted a statute granting seventeen people the exclusive right to operate the only slaughterhouse in Orleans. All other slaughterhouses were required to close down. Any butcher who desired to continue his trade would be permitted to do so in the new slaughterhouse and would be ...

Book Review: A Nation of Victims

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 1993

A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character by Charles J. Sykes (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992); 289 pages; $22.95. One of the reasons that socialism came to have such a great appeal to many in the 19th and 20th centuries was that it offered a powerful rationale for an individual to avoid responsibility for the consequences of ...

America’s Wars and the Los Angeles Riots, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 Whether the jury's verdict in the Rodney King case was a miscarriage of justice is beside the point. The real point is the shocking reaction to the verdict by many in the black and Hispanic communities. No mereacquittal can engender the response that was manifested in Los Angeles. The anger and outrage of the ...

Historical Capitalism vs. The Free Market

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1993

During the dark days of Nazi collectivism in Europe, the German economist Wilhelm Röpke used the haven of neutral Switzerland for continuing to write and lecture on the moral and economic principles of the free society. "Collectivism," he warned, was "the fundamental and moral danger of the West." The triumph ...

Wanted: A Real Deregulatory Revolution

by Doug Bandow January 1, 1993

Jennifer Crafts exemplifies the best of American entrepreneurship. She wanted both to work and to spend more time with A.J., her infant son. So she opened a restaurant-A.J.'s Place- and put A.J. in a playpen next to the kitchen. The customers were almost as happy as Jennifer to have him around. Explained regular Richard Reynolds, ...

Book Review: Laogai – The Chinese Gulog

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1993

Laogai—The Chinese Gulag by Hongda Harry Wu (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, Inc., 1992); 247 pages; $34.95. The world has marveled for over ten years at the economic progress in communist China. The collective farms were transformed into private family enterprises. The Communist Party declared that "to be rich is glorious," and ...

America’s Wars and the Los Angeles Riots, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 1992

Part 1 | Part 2 For much of the 20th century, the United States government has waged its Wars on Poverty, Drugs, and Illiteracy. And there is no better evidence of the failure of these wars than the riots that occurred in Los Angeles. The principles that undergird America's economic system in our time are radically different from those under ...

“Competing Capitalism” and the New Rationales for Economic Collectivism

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1992

Since the collapse of the communist governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the West has basked in the glory of the triumph of democracy and capitalism over dictatorship and socialism. The need for "market relationships" and a capitalist economy to assure both economic prosperity and political ...

The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism, Part 3: The 20th Century

by Ralph Raico December 1, 1992

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The First World War was the watershed of the twentieth century. Itself the product of antiliberal ideas and policies, such as militarism and protectionism, the Great War fostered statism in every form. In Europe and America, the trend towards state intervention accelerated, as governments conscripted, censored, inflated, ran up mountains ...

Book Review: Russia Transformed

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1992

Russia Transformed: Breakthrough to Hope by James H. Billington (New York: The Free Press, 1992); 202 pages; $19.95. Earlier this year, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., hosted an exhibit of previously secret documents from the Soviet archives. One of them was an order sent by Lenin on August 11, 1918, to ...