The Libertarian Angle: What Is Socialism? by Future of Freedom Foundation July 13, 2017 FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss the nature of socialism. Go to the podcast.
Liquor Socialism by Laurence M. Vance July 7, 2017 As long as America has been a nation, governments at all levels have sought to tax, regulate, control, and even prohibit the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The most infamous example, of course, is the era of Prohibition. The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution took effect in January 1920. It didn’t ban outright the consumption or possession of alcohol, ...
Socialism: Marking a Century of Death and Destruction by Richard M. Ebeling March 6, 2017 In August of 1993 I was in invited to participate in a conference in Vilnius, Lithuania on “Liberty and Private Business.” This was less than two years after the formal disappearance of the Soviet Union as a political entity on the map of the world. During our time there my wife and I were offered the opportunity to be given ...
Free the Airports! by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2017 According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), U.S. airlines and foreign airlines serving the United States carry about 900 million passengers per year systemwide on more than 9 million flights (domestic and international). The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) projects that the total number of enplanements will grow to 1.2 billion by 2036. More than ...
American Progressivism in Its Epoch by Joseph R. Stromberg March 1, 2017 After 1865, rapid industrial consolidation and concentration of wealth, aggravated by the Panics of 1873 and 1893, provoked the Populist farmers’ movement, the labor strife characteristic of the mid-to-late 19th century, and the anti-trust movement. As historian Nancy Cohen has shown, the Liberal Republican reformers of the 1870s, disgusted by corruption under President Ulysses Grant, wanted to address the ...
Prohibition and the Socialist Ideal by Ludwig von Mises March 1, 2017 Under the capitalistic system, the ultimate bosses are the consumers. The sovereign is not the state, it is the people. And the proof that they are the sovereign is borne out by the fact that they have the right to be foolish. This is the privilege of the sovereign. He has the right to make mistakes, no one can ...
How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 3 by James Bovard February 1, 2017 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Barack Obama took office in 2009 amidst the worst recession since the early 1980s. He had more faith in government spending than any White House occupant since Franklin Roosevelt. He speedily pushed through a stimulus bill through Congress that helped increase the number of food-stamp recipients from ...
How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 2 by James Bovard January 1, 2017 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Last month we saw how political demagoguery helped make hunger a major issue in American politics beginning in the late 1960s. After Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, liberals and their media allies largely declared victory over hunger. Carter was a humane progressive and there was no ...
How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 1 by James Bovard December 1, 2016 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The federal government is now feeding more than 100 million Americans. The vast increase in dependency fundamentally changes the relationship of Washington to the citizenry. The more Americans rely on handouts, the more difficult it becomes to roll back politicians’ power over those who do not. There was no ...
The Libertarian Angle: The Principles of Socialism by Future of Freedom Foundation November 3, 2016 FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss the moral and practical failings of socialism. Go to the podcast.
The Great Goober Train Wreck of 2016 by James Bovard November 1, 2016 The history of federal peanut policy is the perfect antidote to anyone who still believes that Congress could competently manage a lemonade stand. Federal spending for peanut subsidies will have risen eightfold between last year and next year — reaching almost a billion dollars and approaching the total value of the peanut harvest. This debacle is only the latest ...
The New Deal, Part 1: Domestic Policy by Joseph R. Stromberg November 1, 2016 Part 1 | Part 2 Today, few Americans are left from the Greatest Generation (a phrase which my father, born in 1912, would have seen as obvious propaganda). There are more, perhaps, who experienced the New Deal directly as very small children. Most of us know it only from history, family lore, popular culture, film, and (yes) ...