Daily Articles

The Calling: How Cronyism Worsens Income Inequality (and Freed Markets Reduce It)

by Steven Horwitz October 30, 2014

I recently gave an introductory Public Choice talk sponsored by Students for Liberty at the University of Ottawa. The next speaker was my friend Anne Rathbone Bradley, who was Skyping in from Washington. Anne gave a terrific talk about cronyism and rent-seeking that nicely complemented many of the points I’d made. But one of the side issues she raised ...

How Profit Benefits the Public

by Richard Parsons October 30, 2014

Portuguese I’ve heard, like you have, about corporate greed. The profit motive, we are told, is evil and causes the little people to be trampled. Formal studies show that people perceive that profit is negatively associated with social value for specific companies and whole industries (example — that “evil” oil industry). This is probably no surprise, ...

The Austrian Economist Who Should Have Received the Nobel Prize

by Richard M. Ebeling October 29, 2014

On October 13th, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced in Stockholm, Sweden, with French economist, Jean Tirole, the recipient for his work on developing models to better assist governments in regulating private enterprise. A couple of weeks earlier, Reuters news agency had reported that the Austrian School economist, Israel M. Kirzner, was on the short list for ...

Abolish the Income Tax and IRS

by Sheldon Richman October 28, 2014

For some time now we’ve lived with the scourge of civil asset forfeiture, under which the police can seize a person’s property on the mere suspicion it was used in a crime and without having to charge the owner with an offense. Since the authorities have no burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the burden of proving ...

An Individualistic Foreign Policy

by Laurence M. Vance October 28, 2014

Two Americans were killed this past summer fighting for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in its ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both were young men, and both were U.S. citizens. One had dual citizenship and the other joined the Israeli army after visiting the country in 2012. It turns out that there is a long ...

The Libertarian Angle: Separating School & State

by Future of Freedom Foundation October 27, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: why need to end the state's involvement in the education of our children. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

TGIF: The State Is No Friend of the Worker

by Sheldon Richman October 24, 2014

The election season is upon us, and we’re hearing the usual political promises about raising wages. Democrats pledge to raise the minimum wage and assure equal pay for equal work for men and women. Republicans usually oppose those things, but their explanations are typically lame. (“The burden on small business would be increased too much.”) Some Republicans endorse raising ...

Liberty.me: The Antimilitarist Libertarian Tradition with Sheldon Richman

by Sheldon Richman October 23, 2014

FFF vice-president Sheldon Richman's monthly webinar at Liberty.me. It is not possible to favor both freedom and war. War goes with tyranny, despotism, and socialism, which is why the liberal tradition has been unflinching in its support of peace. Strangely, there are periods in which this truth has been forgotten or suppressed: 19th century British ...

Obama Still Does a Good Imitation of Bush

by Sheldon Richman October 22, 2014

We really should be used to this by now. After almost six years in office, President Obama is far more like George W. Bush in national-security matters than he led the American people to believe. For example, the New York Times’ Charlie Savage reports that Obama has yet to decide whether the international ban on torture applies to U.S. government ...

Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Theory of Inflations and Recessions

by Richard M. Ebeling October 21, 2014

Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1934, there appeared in English one of the most important books on money and inflation penned in the twentieth century, The Theory of Money and Credit by the Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. Even eight decades later, it still offers the clearest analysis and understanding of booms and busts, inflations and depressions. Mises ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Discovery of Iraq’s WMDs (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation October 20, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the recent revelations of the U.S. government's decision to hide its discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

TGIF: Leonard P. Liggio (1933–2014)

by Sheldon Richman October 17, 2014

I lost one of my favorite teachers this week, as did so many other libertarians, not to mention  the freedom movement as a whole. Leonard P. Liggio, 81, died after a period of declining health. Leonard was a major influence on my worldview during the nearly 40 years I knew him. While I had not seen him much in ...