Daily Articles

The Case for Economic Freedom

by Benjamin A. Rogge July 1, 2015

I shall identify my brand of economics as that of economic freedom, and I shall define economic freedom as that set of economic arrangements that would exist in a society in which the government’s only function would be to prevent one man from using force or fraud against another — including within this, of course, the task of national ...

Prohibition’s Killing Fields

by Matthew Harwood July 1, 2015

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 400 pages. When American bombs began to rain down on Vietnam, the country’s water buffalo reacted queerly. The fields full of opium had always been there, but once the U.S. munitions fell around them, the water buffalo left their pastures ...

The Libertarian Angle: World War II–The Good War That Wasn’t

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 30, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week, Jacob and guest co-host Ted Grimsrun discuss World War II and Ted's book The Good War That Wasn't -- and Why It Matters. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast here.

F. A. Hayek and Why Government Can’t Manage Society, Part II

by Richard M. Ebeling June 29, 2015

It is seventy years, now, since near the end of the Second World War Austrian economist, and much later Nobel Prize winner, Friedrich A. Hayek published his most famous article, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” in September 1945, demonstrating why it is impossible for a system of socialist central planning to effectively manage a complex and ever-changing economy ...

Keeping Government Bureaucrats Off the Backs of the Citizenry: The Supreme Court Responds

by John W. Whitehead June 29, 2015

“No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’.”—Texas Rangers In one swoop, on June 22, 2015, a divided U.S. Supreme Court handed down three consecutive rulings affirming the right of raisin farmers, hotel owners and prison inmates. However, this push back against government abuse, government snooping and government theft ...

Opening Minds on Open Borders (video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 26, 2015

FFF President Jacob Hornberger appears on the Joe Christiano Show on Liberty Talk Live to discuss the libertarian case for open immigration.

F. A. Hayek and Why Government Can’t Manage Society, Part I

by Richard M. Ebeling June 25, 2015

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. On May 8th, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied Powers in Europe. On September 2nd, Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, thus ending a global conflict that is estimated to have cost the lives of ...

Progressives Against Liberal Values

by David S. D'Amato June 24, 2015

The tragedy in South Caroline, the result of the vile acts of a murdering racist, finds the political class once again dreaming of new “gun safety reforms” — which we can safely decode as new ways to trample on the individual’s right to possess a firearm. As President Obama put it, “If Congress had passed some common sense gun ...

Libertarian Angle: Racism, Gun Control, and Craziness

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 23, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week, the gun massacre in Charleston. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

The Elusive Just Price

by Laurence M. Vance June 22, 2015

The annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) was held in Chicago recently. The conference, which was attended by about 25,000 scientists and doctors concerned with the treatment of cancer, was heavily sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. Thus, it came as a big surprise when Dr. Leonard Saltz, chief of Gastrointestinal Oncology at Memorial Sloan ...

Libertarians Are Pro-Market, Not Pro-Business

by David S. D'Amato June 19, 2015

There is a popular narrative that treats pro-market and pro-business essentially as synonyms, thus seeing the most libertarian-leaning candidates as those most favored by major corporate interests. The idea is that big business both desires and benefits from an environment of total laissez faire, of cutthroat competition free from the control of meddlesome regulators. The problem is that from a ...

Prisons Without Walls: We’re All Inmates in the American Police State

by John W. Whitehead June 18, 2015

“It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free—to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation wants him to think, feel and act. . . . To ...