I wrote this in 2015 to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, or Great Charter. In light of current events—featuring a president who aspires to unchecked power, despairs of the rule of law, and has discussed suspending the right of habeas corpus—the posting of...
A dubious theory held by some libertarians has been knocking about. It goes something like this: The claim that government-controlled land is actually unowned—and thus not properly subject to government rulemaking—would lead to consequences that reasonable people...
After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a fool of herself by defining habeas corpus as "a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country," Justin Amash, the libertarian former congressman, posted an apt quotation...
When encountering a public problem, people tend to fall into one of two camps: one camp, the larger one, says, "There oughta be a law." The other one asks, "How has the government created or aggravated the situation?" We know which camp Maestro Trump belongs to. Take...
Let's hear no more about America First! It's a fraud, a cover for collectivist nationalism, and a distraction from what matters. (It also looks like camouflage for Trump Family First, but let's take it at face value for now.) On foreign policy, America First does not...
Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian approach to economics, was not the first or last thinker to see similarities between a society and a living organism, suggesting the existence of undesigned, spontaneous order. The names Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, before...
To live is to act. To act is to choose. To choose is to prefer. To prefer is to pursue values—that is, to value. That's logic-guided observation. Ego sum, ergo aestimo: I am, therefore I value. (HT: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Ludwig von Mises.) Next: to think is to act....
Consumer goods are also called finished goods. The products we buy at the supermarket and other retail stores have, in less finished form, passed through many stages (including distribution), reaching back to the original factors of production: land and labor. Land...
