The recent coronavirus panic has provided a stark reminder about the scarcity of economic goods. From people hoarding and stockpiling common household items like toilet paper and hand sanitizer to the downright morbid reports of doctors in Italy and Spain having to...
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...
That adroit member of the British Parliament Enoch Powell once said that “the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.” This duty, incumbent upon politicians endowed with wisdom, is made difficult because “by the very order of things...
There’s a lot to be said regarding the Fed’s surprise announcements—including its Sunday surprise of $700 billion in renewed QE and the complete elimination of all reserve requirements for banks—but here let me just focus on one element: the tendency for Fed officials...
While sicknesses and death mount from the coronavirus pandemic, the responses by all levels of government have been overwhelming. School closings, business closings, cancellations of sporting events and concerts, “stay in place” orders, hysterical panic spread by the...
The natural response in the face of a pandemic like the one we are experiencing today with COVID-19 is to take immediate and direct action to curb the crisis. We are told we need to have extensive quarantines, citywide lockdowns, and shelter-in-place orders. We...
Momentous events usually leave strong memories on those who have lived through them, and those memories often become passed on to later generations in the form of historical interpretations of why and what had happened in the past. This has certainly been so in the...
[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...
