Daily Articles

Why Doesn’t Democracy Work?

by David S. D'Amato January 1, 2015

Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter by Ilya Somin (Stanford University Press 2013), 280 pages. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, law professor Ilya Somin looks down into the apparently fathomless depth of voter ignorance and concludes that dividing and decentralizing the power of the federal government can alleviate many of the ills attending such ignorance. Somin ...

Nothing to Fear from New Technologies If the Market Is Free

by Kevin Carson January 1, 2015

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (W.W. Norton & Company 2014), 320 pages. The subject of this book is the “second machine age,” in which “computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power — the ability to use our brains to understand ...

The Unpredictable Future and Winning Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling December 31, 2014

As a new year begins, it is easy to consider that the prospects for freedom in America and in many other parts of the world to seem dim. After all, government continues to grow bigger and more intrusive, along with tax burdens that siphon off vast amounts of private wealth. Extrapolating these trends out for the foreseeable future, it would ...

Last Chance for an End-of-Year Donation to FFF

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 31, 2014

If you haven’t yet made an end-of-year (tax-deductible) donation to The Future of Freedom Foundation, you still have today to drop a check in the mail, call us, or use our online donation form. Another great way to support our work is to purchase a subscription to our monthly journal of ideas on liberty, Future of Freedom, and ...

Uncompromising Principles — The Key to a Free Society

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 31, 2014

Here’s an important question for you: Why should you donate your hard-earned money to The Future of Freedom Foundation? For 25 years, people have said to me, “Jacob, you need to be less radical, more moderate, and more compromising. That will make FFF more credible, respectable, and influential.” Nonsense! Was it moderation and compromise that brought us such ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Cuban Embargo (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation December 30, 2014

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the Cuban embargo.

Yes, Virginia, There is No Political Santa Claus

by Richard M. Ebeling December 29, 2014

At a time of the year when gift giving and charitable good spirit fills the air, please allow me to be the one who rains on the parade: “Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus!” I don’t mean the Santa who comes down the chimney with toys for every girl and boy. This is the Santa who really is Mom ...

State Heretics and State Infidels

by Wendy McElroy December 22, 2014

The term statolatry refers to worshiping the state as the source of goodness to which all else should be subordinated. In statolatry, instead of having a separation of church and state, the state replaces the church and becomes its own religion. In his book Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, Ludwig von Mises ...

TGIF: Monopoly and Aggression

by Sheldon Richman December 19, 2014

The concepts monopoly and aggression are intimately related, like lock and key, or mother and son. You cannot fully understand the first without understanding the second. Most of us are taught to think of a monopoly as simply any lone seller of a good or service, but this definition is fraught with problems, as Murray Rothbard, Austrian economists generally, and ...

Achieving Freedom Now (video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 18, 2014

  Please consider supporting the work of The Future of Freedom Foundation. You can donate here.

What about the Detainees in U.S. Prisons?

by Laurence M. Vance December 18, 2014

The United States has finally released the last three detainees from the Parwan Detention Center in Afghanistan. “The Defense Department no longer operates detention facilities in Afghanistan nor maintains custody of any detainees,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Myles Caggins told The Associated Press. Two of the detainees were transferred to Afghan custody for possible prosecution and a third ...

Getting Away with Torture

by Sheldon Richman December 17, 2014

Now we have it straight from the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Dianne Feinstein: Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured. I also believe that the conditions of confinement and the use of authorized and unauthorized interrogation and conditioning techniques were cruel, inhuman, and degrading. I believe the evidence of this is ...