Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

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...

As the Wise Man Said…

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 28, 2021 | Blog, Libertarianism

[T]the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man ... is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way.... The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty [for which] no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. --Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 4, Chapter 9

TGIF: Beware the Government-“Science” Complex

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 24, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The government-"science" complex ostensibly promotes the search for facts about our world, but it actually promotes and enforces orthodoxy, protects resulting paradigms, and manufactures apparent consensuses that are questioned only at one's reputational peril. That's why I put the word science in quotation marks. I could have called it pseudoscience or junk science. In contrast to real science, "science" is little more than the broadcast of evidence-free alarms that politicians and bureaucrats, advised by anointed government-financed "scientists," use to justify political action and...

Why Do Climate Alarmists Dislike Climate Realist-Optimists So Much?

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 23, 2021 | Blog, Politics

F. A. Hayek, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist of the Austrian tradition, provided a possible answer to the question posed in the title. Although Hayek (1899-1992) to my knowledge had nothing to say about the climate controversy, his views on macroeconomics met with a similarly critical attitude from those who practiced economics at a level far, far removed from individual action. He too was in essence called a science denier, in this case the science was economics. Here's what he said when contrasting the method of the natural sciences of "simple phenomena" with the methods of social and...

TGIF: Get Rich Quicker!

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 17, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

"I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” --John Stuart Mill, 1828 We mustn't let the wrongdoing of politicians and bureaucrats blind us to the good things going on in the world. Outside the political realm, many things are doing pretty darn well. The long-term trends for many indicators have been positive for the last couple of centuries. Short-term disturbances, most often the result of political mischief, are temporary, and the progress resumes when the politicians loosen...

TGIF: Bad Sign?

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 10, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

When I see four of those yard signs on my morning walk, I chuckle. If I'm in a mischievous mood I might someday suggest a couple of memes that the owners might add. I could embrace all of those memes, but not without some qualification and in several cases, a good deal of qualification. But that's for another day. Today I want to focus on numbers 5 and 6: "Science Is Real" and "Water Is Life." I wouldn't comment on these were it not for their ominous implications for government policy. Some people are ready to spend trillions of other people's money because of what they suppose those sayings...