Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

TGIF: Magna Carta Day

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 13, 2025 | Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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 this slightly modified version seemed appropriate. Magna Carta is remembered, somewhat fuzzily, for reining in the power of the government, for substituting the rule of law for the arbitrary rule of a man, and for a faltering step toward a decent system of justice (presumption of innocence, burden of proof, trial by jury, and so...

TGIF: On “Public Property”

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 6, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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 would find abhorrent. Therefore, in the U.S. case, such land should be regarded as owned by Americans with the government as their representative. While privatization is the best course, it is unlikely to occur anytime soon. In the meantime, the government should make policy as though it were a private owner or the agent of private...

Immigration Conversation with Jacob Hornberger

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 4, 2025 | Blog

TGIF: The Worst Are Already on Top

by Sheldon Richman | May 30, 2025 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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 on X: Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments [staff] must have no moral convictions of their own. They must, above all, be unreservedly committed to the person of the leader; but next to this the most important thing is that they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of...

TGIF: Maestro Trump and Drug Prices

by Sheldon Richman | May 23, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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 prescription-drug prices. Because Americans pay higher prices on average for prescription drugs under patent (but not for generics) than people in other countries pay, Trump, who used to call price controls "socialist," has ordered the drug companies "to offer American consumers the most-favored-[developed-]nation lowest price."...

TGIF: Individuals, Not America, First

by Sheldon Richman | May 16, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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 exclusively describe the supposed noninterventionist side of the public debate. The openly interventionist side supports meddling because, in its view, that's in "America's interest." That view is wrong and needs to be refuted, as it has been often. But that does not mean the interventionists don't believe it. Doubt their...

TGIF: On the Importance of Undesigned Order

by Sheldon Richman | May 9, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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 Menger, and Herbert Spencer and F. A. Hayek, after Menger, come to mind. Ferguson wrote in An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), "Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed...

TGIF: On Value and Freedom

by Sheldon Richman | May 2, 2025 | Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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. "[T]hinking itself [is] an action," Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action, "proceeding step by step from the less satisfactory state of insufficient cognizance to the more satisfactory state of better insight." Shortcut: to think is to value. (James Ellias of Inductica calls this the "value axiom.") Like it or not, we're...