Keith Knight | The Libertarian Institute

The Democratic Policy Which Keeps Poor People Poor – Walter E. Williams

by Keith Knight | Apr 30, 2023 | Blog

To criticize occupational licensing laws is not to argue that information about the quality of a licensee's services is not important to consumers. However, it is by no means clear that licensing is the most effective way to provide that information. Indeed, licensing may lower the "received" quality of the service in question. By making entry costs higher, there are fewer practitioners, which, as noted above, increases the cost of the service rendered and leads some consumers to resort to do-it-yourself methods that generally results in a lower-quality end product. For example, even the...

How Economic Regulation Hurts the Poor – Walter E. Williams

by Keith Knight | Apr 29, 2023 | Blog

In the name of protecting public health, California requires that an individual who seeks to perform any kind of hairstyling service must complete nine months (1,600 hours) of classes at a state-approved cosmetology school, at a tuition cost of at least $5,000, before taking the state licensing examination. This regimen is required even though the school curriculum and the exam bear little or no relation to the kind of services rendered by African hairstylists.... Restricted entry through licensing places disadvantaged people at a severe handicap without necessarily improving the...

10 Lessons From ‘Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War’ (feat. James Corbett)

by Keith Knight | Apr 24, 2023 | Don't Tread on Anyone, Uncategorized

https://youtu.be/sLgCnoz7IBM On Sept. 1, 1939, 70 years ago, the German Army crossed the Polish frontier. On Sept. 3, Britain declared war. Six years later, 50 million Christians and Jews had perished. Britain was broken and bankrupt, Germany a smoldering ruin. Europe had served as the site of the most murderous combat known to man, and civilians had suffered worse horrors than the soldiers. By May 1945, Red Army hordes occupied all the great capitals of Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Berlin. A hundred million Christians were under the heel of the most barbarous tyranny in...

How the Divine Right of Kings Scam Was Pulled Off

by Keith Knight | Apr 23, 2023 | Don't Tread on Anyone

https://youtu.be/0MY12U37IVA In order for the state to function, the mass of the people has to believe in its legitimacy. To that end, the state employs a class of professional apologists and controls the means of propaganda, often through dominance of the education system. The task of the State apologist is “...to convince the public that what the State does is not... crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be supported and obeyed.” In return for their services, the apologists are rewarded with power and status and allowed to share in the booty obtained from...

My Body My Choice: Abolish Occupational Licensing

by Keith Knight | Apr 22, 2023 | Blog, Uncategorized

The most immediate effect of licensing is to restrict the number of practitioners because of the higher entry costs involved in meeting the qualifications of the activity. Some licenses, as in the cases of cosmeticians and barbers, require many months of schooling. Others require the installation of costly health and safety equipment. Still others demand the purchase of the license or "certificate of authorization" from an incumbent practitioner that can cost millions of dollars, as was the case when interstate trucking was highly regulated. Further, some jurisdictions issue only a fixed...

Progressives Are Domestic Imperialists

by Keith Knight | Apr 19, 2023 | Blog, Uncategorized

Progressives will fight tooth and nail to make sure every citizen gets a 1 in 100,000,000 vote between two politicians every four years since it allows the political system to reflect the wishes of the population at large. However, when those very same voters try to make an economic exchange, the Progressive will unapologetically coercively interfere under the guise of "helping the little guy." Want an internship to get on the job experience? Tough luck says the Progressive, if the internship does not pay $15 an hour with benefits it's for your own good that you stay unexperienced. Want to...

The Robber Barons: Historical Fact vs. Progressive Mythology

by Keith Knight | Apr 7, 2023 | Blog, Economics

The standard theory of monopoly within the mainstream of the economics profession is that monopolies increase prices and reduce production levels compared to competitive industries. So I gathered historical economic data on prices and production for seventeen of the industries accused of monopolization during the congressional debates over the Sherman Act. Surprisingly, no other economist had apparently ever done this! What I found was that while real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) increased by about 24 percent from 1880 to 1890, the industries accused of “restricting...

Military Conscription is Slavery: Woodrow Wilson Edition

by Keith Knight | Mar 29, 2023 | Blog, Uncategorized

By the guidelines set down by the Selective Service Act, all males aged 21 to 30 were required to register to potentially be selected for military service. At the request of the War Department, Congress amended the law in August 1918 to expand the age range to include all men 18 to 45, and to bar further volunteering.[7] By the end of World War I, some two million men volunteered for various branches of the armed services, and some 2.8 million had been drafted.[8] This meant that more than half of the almost 4.8 million Americans who served in the armed forces were drafted. Due to the effort...

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