Daily Articles

Book Review: Out of Work

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1993

Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America by Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway (New York/London: Holmes & Meier, 1993); 336 pages. In 1932, the English economist Edwin Cannan delivered the presidential address to the Royal Economic Society. His topic was "The Demand for Labor." With the Great ...

Serfs on the Plantation, Part 4

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 David Koresh and his followers challenged the cult of the omnipotent state. And for that, they paid the ultimate price — death at the hands of United States governmental officials. The message was a powerful one for American serfs: "As long as you behave and obey, ...

Free Trade, Managed Trade and the State, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 In 1836, the English classical liberal Henry Fairbairn looked into the future and this is what he saw: "Seeing then, that in the natural order of things the triumph of Free Trade principles is now inevitable, magnificent indeed are the prospects that ...

Misreading the Industrial Revolution

by Lawrence W. Reed September 1, 1993

Those of us who are advocates of the spontaneous order of an unfettered market are forever stomping out the fires of fallacious reasoning and anticapitalistic bias. It seems that as we set one record straight, opponents of the market manage to pervert ten others. We spend as much time explaining ...

The Environment Since the Industrial Revolution

by Harry Lee Smith September 1, 1993

The unprecedented improvements in the quality of human life during the past 200 years have been the direct result of the individual freedom, technology, industry, and economic growth that began to flower during the Industrial Revolution. The dramatic increase in life expectancy, and hence population, since the Industrial Revolution can be attributed to what may be called "Old Environmentalism" — ...

Facts about the “Industrial Revolution”

by Ludwig von Mises September 1, 1993

Socialist and interventionist authors assert that the history of modern industrialism and especially the history of the British "Industrial Revolution" provide an empirical verification of the "realistic" or "institutional" doctrine and utterly explode the "abstract" dogmatism of the economists. The economists flatly deny that labor unions and government prolabor legislation can and did lastingly benefit the whole class of wage ...

Book Review: Mises

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1993

Mises: An Annotated Bibliography compiled by Bettina Bien Greaves and Robert W. McGee (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1993); 391 pages; $14.95. In his 1894 book, The Tyranny of Socialism, the French classical liberal Yves Guyot admitted that "we, who are endeavoring to recall the principles of equality before the law and the guarantees of individual liberty, are ...

Serfs on the Plantation, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 The welfare state was collapsing under its own weight in the later stages of the Roman Empire. Those who were on the dole were demanding more dole. Those who were paying the taxes were demanding lower taxes. The authorities were in a quandary. If they promised ...

Free Trade, Managed Trade and the State, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1993

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 "The principle of free trade is non-interference," wrote the English classical economist Nassau Senior in 1828. "It is to suffer every man to employ his industry in the manner which he thinks most advantageous, without a pretense on the part of the ...

Compounding the Somali Tragedy

by Doug Bandow August 1, 1993

The post-Cold War is proving to be a disorderly place. Conflicts restrained by the superpowers are now breaking out all over — in Africa, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. More wars could eventually explode in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Tragic those these conflicts are, they need not ...

Immigration and Somalia

by Gregory F. Rehmke August 1, 1993

Calls are rising to send American troops into the cities, towns and villages of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. Perhaps not far in the future, Russia and Ukraine will collapse, leading to calls for American troops to rush in and save the day. But is it possible that there is a better way to save the world? There is a better ...

The Most Dreaded Enemy of Liberty

by James Madison August 1, 1993

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, ...