Regulation Policy & Welfare

The Preservation of the Bureaucracy

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1991

Two hundred years ago, our American ancestors instituted the most unusual political system in history. The Constitution called into existence a government whose powers, for the first time ever, were extremely limited. Thus, unlike other people throughout history, Americans lived without such things as income taxation, welfare, licensure, immigration ...

The Sanctity of Private Property, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 1991

Part 1 | Part 2 The last thing which Americans of today wish to face is that they have abandoned the principles of private property on which the United States was founded. In last August's Freedom Daily, I pointed to two examples of where the American people have permitted their public officials to assume absolute and total control ...

Yes, Virginia, There Is No Santa Claus

by Richard M. Ebeling December 25, 1990

One of Karl Marx's most effective and influential methods of argumentation was to use language and mental imagery which were descriptive of an earlier stage of human history and then apply them to the emerging market-oriented society in which he lived. For example, the politically enforced caste systems of the old days became, for him, the "class struggle" of capitalism; ...

The Impossibility of Socialism

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1990

In May 1988, the Soviet newspaper Pravda ran an article which summarized the condition of the Soviet socialist economy: "Not one of the 170 essential sectors has fulfilled the objectives of the Plan a single time over the last 20 years ... this has brought about a chain reaction of hardship and imbalance which has led to 'planned ...

Sinking in a Sea of Buts

by Leonard Read September 1, 1990

There were five of us at a predinner get-together, one an Austrian. These friends were each as near purists in the freedom philosophy as one ever comes upon — which is the only reason for mentioning one man's dissent. His dissent seemed insignificant, but it's the minor deviations and inconsistencies of the philosophical elite — ...

The Sanctity of Private Property, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1990

Part 1 | Part 2 No myth is more pervasive among the people of the United States than that which claims that the American economic system is based on the sanctity of private property. The American people have been taught since the first grade in their government schools that America is the bastion of private property while the Soviet ...

The Heritage of Economic Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1990

For the Founding Fathers, economic liberty was inseparable from the case for political freedom. Many of the grievances enumerated in the Declaration of Independence concern British infringements on the free movement of goods and men between the thirteen colonies and the rest of the world. It was not a coincidence that ...

The United States and the Roman Empire

by Lawrence W. Reed June 1, 1990

Nearly four decades before the birth of Christ, the Roman orator Cicero offered this sound advice: "The budget should be balanced, public debt should be reduced, the treasury should be rebuilt, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest ...

A Message from FFF’s Vice-President

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1990

In the early decades of the 20th century, the political ideal on every one's lips was socialism, and the economic vision before every one's eyes was that of the planned economy. The capitalist system, with its institutions of private property and free enterprise, would soon be a thing of the past ...