Freedom Daily Archive

The Justice of Pay Discrimination

by Michael Tennant May 1, 2009

Recently the upstairs toilet in my house backed up. Unable to budge the clog, my wife called a plumber, who replaced both the seal and some of the inner workings of the toilet. Let’s say, just for the sake of this example, that the plumber charged us $200 for the repair. Now suppose the next day the downstairs toilet had needed ...

Selling Short the Short-Seller

by Gregory Bresiger May 1, 2009

It happens every financial crash. Or in every prolonged bear market. Or almost any time things go bad in the financial markets. An evil person must be found. Oftentimes, the scapegoat is the short-seller. Today the short-seller is like Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. It’s ...

A Free Market in Labor

by George Leef May 1, 2009

Labor Economics from a Free Market Perspective: Employing the Unemployable by Walter Block (World Scientific, 2008); 393 pages. The first time I ever heard of Walter Block was in 1980, when a faculty colleague showed me his copy of Block’s book Defending the Undefendable. Knowing of my anarcho-capitalist views, my colleague said ...

Gold and Freedom, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 Among the major threats facing the American people today is out-of-control spending at the hands of the U.S. government. It is a grave danger that people have faced throughout history from their own governments. After all, let’s not forget the oft-repeated claim by U.S. officials about ...

Hope Is No Substitute for Theory

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2009

Should libertarians hope that Barack Obama succeeds or fails in his presidency? The question comes to mind because conservatives got embroiled in the issue when their leading radio star, Rush Limbaugh, said he hoped Obama would fail. Some commentators thought that was a horrible thing to say. Radio stars need ...

Obama and Perilous Delusions of Democracy

by James Bovard April 1, 2009

When Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, there was euphoria across the land and millions of people cheered in the streets of Washington. Many people are convinced that American democracy has been redeemed and that the federal government no longer poses a peril to individual rights. Since the people’s choice is now at the helm of the U.S. ...

Arrogance and Torture: A History of Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington April 1, 2009

The mesh-wire cages, suitable only for animals, are empty now and overgrown, but they will stand forever as a symbol of the Bush administration’s brutal and destructive “war on terror” policies, implemented in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland on September 11, 2001. This is Camp X-Ray, the first of the prison camps at the U.S. ...

The Fallacies of Another New Deal, Part 2

by William L. Anderson April 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In the latter part of 1920, the economy fell into a deep recession, which lasted well into 1921. As Murray Rothbard points out, it was the last downturn in which the government did not play much of a role. Newly elected President Warren G. Harding openly said that government should ...

Spending Our Way to Wealth and Prosperity

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2009

One of the most ludicrous policy prescriptions issued by federal officials is the one that exhorts the citizenry to spend more money to get the nation out of a recession. That’s the key to national economic prosperity, government officials exclaim. “Go to the mall and shop,” they tell people. If people will just spend, spend, and spend some more, ...

The Madoff Scandal Exposes Government Failure

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2009

A rule we can rely on to be unfailingly applied is this: No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains. This of course is evidence of a rigged game. The government can’t possibly monitor and regulate absolutely every transaction that ...

Boundless Ignorance versus Self-Government

by James Bovard March 1, 2009

Modern democracy is based on faith that the people can control what they do not understand. As government has grown by leaps and bounds, “government by the people” has become one of the great fairy tales of our times. As the Founding Fathers feared, citizen ignorance often brings out the worst in their rulers. Contemporary ...

The Fallacies of Another New Deal, Part 1

by William L. Anderson March 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As the financial panics on Wall Street seem to be never-ending, a lot of commentators are openly asking whether the United States will slide into something akin to the Great Depression of nearly 80 years ago. Certainly, there is real fear in the air, and at this writing, the current ...