Something that VIA frequently gets requests for is help with rent payments. Why is it difficult for so many people to afford housing? The standard answer is that it’s those lazy landlords, sitting on piles of money and smoking cigars, who are to blame. This seems to...
For the audio version, check out my podcast A Boy Named Pseu where you can download it on all podcast platforms. (read starts at 8:54) Read full piece here. Is it, now? Well, haven’t you heard? The 11 year fad of magic internet money is long over. Nobody is buying,...
California — It’s been two years since California began licensing businesses to sell legal marijuana. Unfortunately, however, the legal scene is far outmatched by the black market and the state government is 100% responsible. Instead of reacting to the negative...
In various writings, Milton Friedman argued that there is a variable lag between changes in money supply and its effect on real output and prices. Friedman held that in the short run changes in money supply will be followed by changes in real output. However, in the...
Political correctness recently took a dangerous turn in the United Kingdom when the North Bristol National Health Service Trust announced that hospital patients who use offensive, racist, or sexist language will cease receiving medical care as soon as it is safe to...
First it was the generals who took control over U.S. foreign policy, preventing President Trump from bringing the troops home from the Middle East and Afghanistan, as he said he was going to do. And now, it’s the federal bureaucracy that has absorbed Trump. According...
When Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek (1899–1992) wrote his famous book The Road to Serfdom (1944) in the midst of the Second World War, he mentioned in the preface that he had often been told by his socialist colleagues that he would, no doubt, hold an important...
Ludwig von Mises famously argued that people must choose between outright socialism and unfettered capitalism, because there is no coherent “middle ground” between the two. The allegedly reasonable compromise of a highly interventionist state — where the authorities...
