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Dangerous Times

by | Apr 3, 2020 | ,

We live in dangerous times -- and not just medically and economically. Government executives all over the world -- with a few honorable exceptions -- are exercising autocratic power, that is, power without legislative or constitutional authority, in the name of stopping the spread of the coronavirus. With respect to these orders, due process is absent. All around the U.S., governors and local authorities have decreed shutdowns of arbitrarily defined "non-essential" businesses and lock-downs. Curfews have been imposed. The content of these orders may make sense, depending on the locale and...

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Flunk the State!

by | Apr 1, 2020 | , ,

Knowledgeable people (Bill Gates among them) had warned for years that governments were ill-prepared for serious pandemics. The US government was not just ill-prepared; it also maintained regulatory obstacles -- in the name of public health -- to others who were willing and able to act. I'd say the case for statelessness looks better all the time.

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No Case for Closed Borders

by | Mar 30, 2020 | , ,

Anyone who thinks the coronavirus pandemic destroys the case for open borders hasn't thought the matter through terribly far. Bryan Caplan explains here. Just to give a taste, in the name of excluding viruses from our shores, the government would have to stop immigration even when no pandemic was in progress since pandemics can't be counted on to announce themselves in advance. Moreover, tourism, commercial visits, and trade would have to be abolished too. And -- yikes! -- so would American travel abroad unless Americans were willing to leave home and never return. One last thing: since we...

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An Approach to Collective Problems

by | Mar 28, 2020 | , ,

Libertarian political philosophy, as a practical matter, does not offer a prefabricated set of solutions to collective problems. Rather, it's a liberty-based approach to ameliorating collective problems that begins by acknowledging (among other things) the dispersion, incompleteness, and tacit dimension of relevant knowledge. Thus, the approach favors decentralization, competition (in ideas and services), and choice about what trade-offs to make and with whom to cooperate. Perhaps ironically, to succeed, individualism requires and produces the collective intelligence that only markets embody.

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TGIF: Libertarianism in Emergencies

TGIF: Libertarianism in Emergencies

by | Mar 27, 2020 | , , , ,

Libertarians have always acknowledged that emergencies -- severe extraordinary conditions of limited duration -- can justify actions that would be unacceptable under normal circumstances. This doesn't mean that all the rights-based rules disappear, only that some measures are deemed permissible that otherwise would be beyond the pale. Danger, however, lurks in this principle, requiring eternal vigilance. For example, if someone collapses unconscious in the street, you may do things intended to help him without his consent. This does not justify a general policy of paternalism. Another common...

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TGIF: Despite Appearances, ‘Price Gouging’ Helps People in Distress

TGIF: Despite Appearances, ‘Price Gouging’ Helps People in Distress

by | Mar 20, 2020 | , , ,

[This article originally appeared on the American Institute for Economic Research website on September 12, 2017.] Critics of the free economy often complain that the market fails to “behave” as economic theory predicts. Hence the voluminous literature on “market failure” (which sparked a substantial public choice literature on “government failure” and the need for comparative institutional analysis). But critics also fault the free economy for behaving exactly as the theory predicts. Hence the outcry against “price gouging” during natural and manmade disasters. The market is damned when it...

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Price-Gouging Laws Violate the First Amendment

by | Mar 12, 2020 | , ,

Laws against so-called price gouging -- that is, price spikes during emergencies -- violate our natural right to engage in voluntary exchange at mutually acceptable terms. As economics has long taught, price ceilings that defy market forces make the affected goods vanish from the market. Instead of a product being available at a price more-than-X, it is instead unavailable at a price less-than-X. Small comfort for the consumer. (Try to find masks and hand sanitizer on ebay or at the supermarket.) Here's another way to look at those laws: they violate freedom of speech (expression) and hence...

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A Pandemic Is No Time to Disparage Freedom

by | Mar 11, 2020 |

Jeff Tucker's "In a Disease Panic, the Free Market Is Your Friend" ought to be atop everyone's reading list. As libertarians well know, people who are under the delusion that government is a creative element in society, rather than a predator, will never let a good crisis go to waste. (Barack Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, put it just that way.) The historian and economist Robert Higgs has documented the history of exploitation of crises to expand power and consume liberty in America in his classic, Crisis and Leviathan. We can see this process on vivid display with the outbreak...

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