Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

David Boaz (1953-2024)

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 7, 2024 | Blog, Libertarianism

With great sadness I note the passing of David Boaz today, June 7, 2024, at age 70. He had been ill for some time. He was a good man and a giant of the libertarian movement. Very much because of David's influence and example, libertarian organizations not only embraced a rigorous dedication to individual liberty, private property, free markets, and peace, but also a commitment to professionalism. He is one big reason libertarianism moved from amateur status to the big league. The value of his multifaceted work, predominantly for the Cato Institute for over 40 years, can not be overstated....

TGIF: Freedom or Power

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 7, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, the Austrian-school economist who learned from Carl Menger and taught Ludwig von Mises, speaks to the ages. We ignore his lessons to our peril. One hundred ten years ago, in a journal article titled "Control or Economic Law," he wrote: [J]ust as natural phenomena are governed by immutable eternal laws, quite independent of human will and human laws, so in the sphere of economics there exist certain laws against which the will of man, and even the powerful will of the state, remain impotent; and that the flow of economic forces cannot, by artificial interference of...

What Inequality?

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 6, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Politics

According to research conducted by Phil Gramm, the late Robert Ekelund, and John Early, documented in The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate and summarized in this video: The bottom 20 percent of households have an average annual income of $13,000, according to the Census Bureau. However, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those households consume an average of $26,000 worth of goods each year. How can that be? In the standard computations of inequality that are used to justify more government spending, the incomes of the rich include taxes paid while...

Immigration Talk

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 6, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics

I talk about immigration with Michael Liebowitz on The Rational Egoist.

Language, Race, and Man

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 5, 2024 | Blog

“Man belongs neither to his language nor to his race; he belongs to himself.” --Ernest Renan

Democracy and Free Stuff

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 4, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Justice, Politics

Democracy: the matching up of people who want free stuff with politicians who promise free stuff. Problem: free stuff as they all imagine it does not exist. However, it does exist in the market, as explained by Frédéric Bastiat in Economic Harmonies, chapter 8, "Private Property and Common Wealth." See my discussion of that chapter.

Nation, Race, and Individual

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 3, 2024 | Uncategorized

"Nation and race do not coincide; there is no nation of pure blood. All peoples have arisen from a mixture of races.... "[T]he concept of race, in the sense in which the advocates of race policy use it, is new, even considerably newer than that of nation. It was introduced into politics in deliberate opposition to the concept of nation. The individualistic idea of the national community was to be displaced by the collectivist idea of the racial community." --Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy, 1919

History and Peace

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 2, 2024 | Blog, History

"[E]very person must take his life and every nation must take its history as it comes; nothing is more useless than complaining over errors that can no longer be rectified, nothing more vain than regret. Neither as judges allotting praise and blame nor as avengers seeking out the guilty should we face the past. We seek truth, not guilt; we want to know how things came about to understand them, not to issue condemnations. Whoever approaches history the way a prosecutor approaches the documents of a criminal case—to find material for indictments—had better stay away from it. It is not the task...