Sheldon Richman

TGIF: Rigged Political Language

by Sheldon Richman | Nov 19, 2021 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

It's an old trick: gain advantage over others by hiding one's meaning behind euphemisms and other forms of linguistic camouflage and misdirection. People do this in all walks of life, but politicians make careers of it. If they engage in straight talk at all, it is by far the exception. The journalist Michael Kinsley defined a gaffe as "when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say." Obfuscation is the currency of politics. Little has changed since Oscar Wilde's time: "Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.” Libertarians have emphasized this scam...

TGIF: Equal Rights Now!

by Sheldon Richman | Nov 12, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

A pet peeve of mine is the distinction, drawn even by some market enthusiasts, between so-called personal liberty (or civil liberties) and economic liberty. The former, which usually includes freedom of conscience and religion, speech, and press, is thought to be noble and spiritual, while the latter, related to commerce and the pursuit of wealth, is held to be vulgar and materialistic. This has its roots in the thinking of the ancients. The distinction thrills the hearts of those who disparage markets and "economic freedom," Pro-market thinkers use the distinction for understandable...

TGIF: Another Climate Conference

by Sheldon Richman | Nov 5, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Sometimes we've got to be grateful for hypocrisy. If those who pretend to be world leaders actually delivered a fraction of what they promise in Glasgow, Scotland, where the UN's COP26 (Conference of Parties) Conference on Climate Change runs through Nov. 12, we'd be far bigger trouble than we already are. You know how these things go. Power-loving, sanctimonious politicians and their minions pontificate (for 12 days!?) on how the world will end in 20 minutes unless they force their subjects to behave in ways they don't wish to behave and to spend trillions of dollars they would rather keep....

TGIF: The Challenging Art of Persuasion

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 29, 2021 | Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Anyone who hopes for a peaceful pro-liberty intellectual revolution is interested in the art of persuasion. But is it a practical art? Can enough people be persuaded to abandon long-held anti-liberty views for something quite different? I'm assuming here that one wishes to persuade people of positions that one really thinks to be right and true. Demagogues may try to sell propositions they don't actually hold, but let's leave them out of the story. Of course, even wrong and bad people can believe what they say and seek to persuade others of those views. But I'm thinking only of the...

TGIF: That Bloody Government Debt

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 22, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The government's attraction to borrowing is hardly a mystery. If the politicians had to extract every dollar they wanted to spend directly from the taxpayers, they might have a revolt on their hands--a bad career move for sure. Borrowing tends to make people more tolerant of bigger government than they would have been otherwise. After all, much of it looks free. They might scrutinize spending programs more closely if they paid the full price out of pocket. Thus forbidding borrowing and related central-bank inflation would put a lid on spending. That's why that program won't fly. As...

TGIF: Inflation Is Evil

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 15, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

When will Americans demand that the government denationalize money and free the market to do what it does better than anything else: serve the general welfare rather than the special interests? It's hard to know what it would take to bring this about, but inflation talk is once again in the air, and that's bad. Worse, it's in the shops. It had to happen after years of Fed Reserve's money creation, through the banking system, in the name of stimulating this or stimulating that. Forget the printing press. All the Fed has to do is buy up oodles of bank assets (government debt and bad private...

TGIF: Looking for the Green New Deal

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 8, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

I was all set this week to plunge into the details of the Green New Deal so I could see what new impositions the climate-alarmist politicians have in store for us. Then I made a startling discovery. (Startling for me, that is. I'm behind the news curve.) The Green New Deal isn't real. By that, I mean no bill in Congress sets out a list of specific government actions thought to be necessary to save the planet from carbon dioxide, heat waves, cold snaps, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, desertification, extinction, more rain and floods, more droughts, more trees, fewer tress, or...

TGIF: Why “Science Denial”?

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 1, 2021 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

In a new book two professors of psychology, Gale Sinatra and Barbara Hofer, seek to explain why what they call "science denial" is rampant today and how dangerous it is. They also give their account in a strange conversation with Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic magazine, from whom we might have expected a tad more "skepticism" or at least some devil's advocacy. The views of all three are in some ways vague and even confused, but the condescension toward the unenlightened rubes who disagree with them on certain scientific controversies--primarily climate- and COVID-19-related--couldn't...

TGIF: Rigged Political Language

TGIF: Equal Rights Now!

TGIF: Another Climate Conference

TGIF: The Challenging Art of Persuasion

TGIF: That Bloody Government Debt

TGIF: Inflation Is Evil

TGIF: Looking for the Green New Deal

TGIF: Why “Science Denial”?

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