Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

TGIF: Back to Barbarism

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 23, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Has Kamala Harris inadvertently done free-market advocates a favor? Let's not get too hopeful, but maybe. How so? By pandering to voters and marketing herself as a consumer watchdog who will stamp out (undefined) supermarket "price gouging." This could create teaching opportunities for champions of the unhampered market economy. This should be our message: Prices emerge from countless transactions through which people seeking mutual benefit trade their money for goods and vice versa. Monetary exchange, unlike the barter system that preceded it, permits the widest possible division of labor...

TGIF: Gaslighting

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 16, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, History, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

I wonder who's gaslighting us now. Here are some of the major perpetrators: The pundits and pseudo-economists of all tribes who try to convince us that the government can spend, borrow, and create money almost without limit or harm. What happens when interest on the national debt swallows up so much of the federal budget that little is left for anything else? The government isn't likely to close shop (too bad), so we ought to be discussing what desperate measures it and its dependents will resort to when the well dries up. The "labor advocates" who try to convince us that the government can...

TGIF: Khan Controlling Trade

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 9, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Lina Khan is a Washington, D.C., rock star. She is not only President Joe Biden's celebrated chief of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC); she's also a favorite of J. D. Vance, Donald Trump's pick for vice president. This Lina Khan must really have something going for her—until you recall that Biden and Vance, and by implication Trump and Kamala Harris, reject individual freedom as an inseparable unity. In other words, personal freedom requires economic freedom and vice versa. What chance does freedom of speech and press have in a society without private property? Individual liberty in the...

TGIF: Democracy as Religion

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 2, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

During a conversation with someone who loves representative democracy but hates America's current political situation, I pointed out a problem with his view. The current situation, I said, is a product of representative democracy. So you can't have the system without the lamented consequences. Why is that? People like free benefits for themselves and society, and politicians prosper by promising and delivering apparently free benefits to enough voters. Individuals and interest groups see the government as a bazaar open for business 24/7. The problem, of course, is that there are no free...

TGIF: Damn Consumers!

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 26, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Global free trade is about individual, not national, freedom—for consumers and producers who import raw materials, tools, and semi-finished products. Aside from its role as an aspect of personal liberty, free trade's efficiency benefits have been well-established since the early 19th century. In this respect, domestic and global trade are the same. Trade restrictions disrupt the productive process, making it less efficient and hence less beneficial to consumers. "All that a tariff can achieve," Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action, "is to divert production from those locations in which the...

Restricting Production

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 24, 2024 | Blog, Economics

"At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production, that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects, and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes. This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Lord Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending. As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can...

“Capitalism” Is about Freedom, Not Capital

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 23, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Justice, Politics

"Why 'capitalism'? Words have an unfortunate tendency to confuse. Free market capitalism is not really about capital, it is about handing control of the economy from the top to billions of independent consumers, entrepreneurs and workers, and allowing them to make their own decisions about what they think will improve their lives. So careless talk about 'taking control of capitalism' actually means that governments take control of citizens. "But it doesn't sound like it, does it? One of my intellectual heroes, Deirdre McCloskey, complains that the word capitalism gives the misleading...

TGIF: The Populist Trap

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 19, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

If you care about individual freedom and general prosperity, you'll want to avoid all shades of populism like the plague. It is economic illiteracy proudly proclaimed and writ large. As an alternative to libertarianism, it is bad in its own right—freedom is not on its agenda—but it is bad also because it is wedded to nationalism. That is, it treats the nation-state—not individuals and their projects—as the fundamental unit. It's ours against theirs. Disregard the hosannas to persons, families, and local communities. It's the nation that matters. Don't believe me? Then why do populists always...