Regulation Policy & Welfare

The Most Dangerous Substance of All

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2001

For all our preoccupation with ridding society of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, little thought is given to the most dangerous mind-altering substance of all: ink. Do you doubters need proof? Take Rachel Carson’s famous book, Silent Spring. In 1963 Carson wrote a book claiming that the insecticide DDT was damaging ...

Morality, the Welfare State, and Freedom

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2001

THE WELFARE STATE and the regulated society are based on a twofold notion about morality: first, that this type of society reflects that people are moral, caring, compassionate, and responsible and, second, that this type of society makes people moral, caring, compassionate, and responsible. Consider, for example, President Bush’s plan to deliver government funding to faith-based organizations. His belief is ...

What Is Golf?

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2001

So now the courts are writing the rules for professional sports. What’s next? Will they soon tell us that sometimes two of a kind beats a full house? On May 29 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the PGA Tour has to let Casey Martin ride in a golf ...

Should Tipping Be Voluntary?

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2001

If New Deal legislation had been enacted in the 1930s requiring people to tip waiters 15 percent of the total amount of their restaurant bill, we might have been subjected to the following debate today: Repeal Advocate: Don’t you think we ought to repeal the tipping law and let ...

Free Markets Aren’t Conservative

by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2001

One of the great myths of the Industrial Age is that businessmen generally like free markets. That myth has deep implications and consequences. For example, someone who buys into it will tend to believe that proposals to deregulate markets are simply favors for special interests and inimical to the interests ...

Book Review: Regulation without the State

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2001

Regulation without the State ... The Debate Continues by John Blundell and Colin Robinson (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2000); 93 pages; $15. ALMOST 40 YEARS AGO, free-market economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman published a short book entitled Capitalism and Freedom (1962). At a time during which Keynesian economics and the popularity of the interventionist-welfare state were still on the ...

The Morality of the Welfare State

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2001

As a compassionate conservative, President Bush wants to give federal aid to faith-based organizations. His plan has drawn attacks from religious leaders on the right and civil libertarians on the left. Religious leaders object to Bush’s plan on the ground that it will lead to governmental interference with religious ...

Beware the Conservationists

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

When politicians and political activists talk about conservation, I know I am about to be mugged. New calls for conservation have come out of the power fiasco in California. The great urban legend of our time is that California’s problem resulted from deregulation of electricity. That’s a laugh. What ...

Abolish the Nonessentials

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2001

THE POMP AND ceremony surrounding George W. Bush’s nomination of new department heads is now complete. The discussion and debate now center on the qualifications of each of the new nominees. But who is asking the crucial question: Rather than appointing the best-qualified people to run the various departments, why not simply abolish the departments themselves? After all, wasn’t this ...

$44,000 Traffic Ticket

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2001

"Perhaps we should periodically count our blessings here in the United States. From a recent Associated Press article : 'A dot.com millionaire said he is fighting a huge traffic fine--reportedly $44,100--for driving dangerously. On a recent spin through downtown Helsinki, Jaakko Rytsola, 27, switched lanes too often and endangered other ...

Morals and the Welfare State, Part 4

by F.A. Harper January 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ISN’T IT a strange thing that if you select any three fundamentally moral persons and combine them into a collective for the doing of good, they are liable at once to become three immoral persons in their collective ...

Morals and the Welfare State, Part 3

by F.A. Harper December 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ANOTHER POINT of possible confusion has to do with coveting the private property of another. There is nothing morally wrong in the admiration of something that is the property of another. Such admiration may be a stimulus to ...