Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

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...

Tariffs Violate Freedom

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 18, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Libertarianism

Debate goes on over who suffers from U.S. tariffs. Biden and Trump, for example, think U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods hurt China, not Americans. This is nonsense. Even if they hurt Chinese producers (who can sell their goods elsewhere), the tariffs still hurt Americans. Whatever the Chinese do, prices in America for the relevant consumer and producer goods, imported and domestic, will rise—that's the point of the tariff—and choice will shrink. Here's what Henry George had to say in Protection or Free Trade: If Americans did not want to buy foreign goods, foreign goods could not be sold here...

TGIF: Culture without Romance

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 12, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

"The entire history of the human race, the rise of man from the caves, has been marked by transfers of cultural advances from one group to another and from one civilization to another." So said economist, social philosopher, and historian Thomas Sowell in a 1990 speech titled "Cultural Diversity." (Watch it here. I also recommend this lecture by Nigel Biggar.) By cultural diversity Sowell did not mean the still-fashionable sense of that term. He has in mind what might be called culture without romance, echoing James Buchanan and the Public Choice school's economics without romance. What does...

TGIF: On the Pursuit of Happiness

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 5, 2024 | Featured Articles, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The most remarkable phrase in the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary we just celebrated, is the pursuit of happiness. Looking back 248 years, that phrase may strike the modern ear as strange for a political document. But it apparently did not seem that way to Americans in 1776. The second paragraph told the world: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The term among these indicates that Thomas Jefferson and the...