Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

TGIF: Who Rules? That Is Not the Question

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 8, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Today's two major contenders for political power seem to be elitists and populists. Funnily enough, both types are present in each of the big tribes known as progressive/liberal and conservatism, left and right, or Democratic and Republican. (Here's the lowdown on paleoconservative elitists.) However, the elitist/populist framework should leave everyone dissatisfied. It omits too many details. Namely, it presents a contest apparently over who should rule: an anointed elite or "the people," which is not always well-defined. I put the term in quotes because the whole people cannot possibly...

TGIF: Tribalism and the Dark Art of the Package Deal

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 1, 2023 | Featured Articles, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Tribalism not only lives; it rules -- even more than I thought! I've been reading Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis's book The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America. It's certainly clarified my thinking. The Lewis brothers are a historian and a political scientist. What they show is something that I and many others have only partly understood. But for me, that's changing now. (Here's an interview with them.) Their thesis is that the terms left, right, liberal, progressive, conservative, Republican, and Democrat do not indicate opposing sides of a single...

TGIF: Why the State Is Corrupt

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 25, 2023 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Why is government corrupt? You'll notice that I did not ask, "Is government corrupt." We've had enough experience to go right to the main question. I might have softened it with the phrase tends to be to acknowledge that not everyone in government is corrupt, at least not in the conventional sense. Lord Acton's statement was, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" -- although I wish he had added, "Power also attracts the corrupt." At any rate, we have a question on the table. Let's go beyond the easy answer. Obviously, any government is intrinsically corrupt because...

TGIF: On “Giving Back”

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 18, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

P&G, the maker of popular household brands like Tide and Downy laundry products, is giving away $10,000 in college scholarships. That's $1.5 million and 150 scholarships in all. My problem, aside from its encouraging college attendance, is with how the company is promoting the program. The television ads proclaim that the company sees the scholarships as a way of "giving back." I've written about this before, but some further thoughts might be useful. So, to whom does P&G wish to give back? Not to existing customers exclusively. The only eligibility requirements are U.S. residency, a...

TGIF: Why Liberty Matters

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 11, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Why does liberty matter? It’s a fair question because, after all, not everyone thinks it matters very much, perhaps beyond some very basic point. If that’s an overstatement, we can safely say that for many people on the left and right, liberty is a lower priority than it is for libertarians and classical liberals. Most pundits and politicians, even most anti-war types, have plans for how to spend your money. What can we libertarians say? We have lots to say. It's a multifront operation. Some libertarians press the case in terms of moral consequentialism, either utilitarian or egoist. Others...

TGIF: Shame on Government for Censoring Us

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 4, 2023 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Alas, federal District Judge Terry A. Doughty's preliminary injunction against government censorship of us on social media has been put on hold. So rules three members of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. But this stay of the injunction in State of Missouri et al. v. Joseph R. Biden Jr. et al. is temporary. NBC News reported a couple of weeks ago that "a different panel drawn from the [same appellate] court, which has 17 active members, will hear arguments on a longer stay." The matter could be resolved quickly though because the three judges "called for arguments in the case to be...

TGIF: What about Politicians?

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 28, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The best-selling social scientist and, it so happens, libertarian Bryan Caplan thinks politicians are immoral. Sounds promising. He's discussed this online and in one of his published blog-post collections, How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery. What are we to make of his contention? Caplan isn't using the libertarian nonaggression standard here. Even people who never heard of that standard or who oppose it ought to be at least open to his case. He's really talking about basic decency: the need to avoid gross negligence. Moreover, he thinks it's irrelevant that politicians may...

TGIF: Paternalists Cross the Free-Speech Line

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 21, 2023 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Some pundits are puzzled that respectable mainstream Democrats and "progressives" are no longer free-speech absolutists but rather are enthusiastic defenders of the government's massive effort to squelch expression on the social media platforms. (Glenn Greenwald is one of those puzzled pundits.) The center-left goes so far as to smear the exposers and critics of government censorship as tin-foil-hatted conspiracy theorists. For example, Matt Taibbi is called a "so-called journalist" for his work on the Twitter Files, despite his award-winning career in investigative reporting. And look how...