Much like the debate around being a glass half full or half empty person, there is split opinion over whether human nature is generally good or bad. Young people are more likely to view human nature as self-serving, unsympathetic, and narrow minded than older...
Libertarianism
In Defense of Inaction
by Brad Pearce | Mar 27, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism
On March 17, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by a woman named Mary Anastasia O’Grady titled, “Giving up on Haiti Isn’t a U.S. Option.” She argues, in short, that Americans don’t have a choice but to continue doing all the things that have failed in the past...
Washington, We Have a Problem
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 22, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Libertarianism, Politics
Centralized power has a problem: the individual. Every person is a potential disrupter of The Plan, and disruption must be forbidden. Otherwise, why have a central plan? This applies regardless of whether the planning is economy-wide or for particular sectors, such as...
TGIF: Is Israel Mad?
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 8, 2024 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Has Israel gone mad? Or has it always been mad? What is the country thinking? The collective nouns seem reasonable in light of the widespread support in that country for the Israeli government's appalling military assault on the people of the Gaza Strip for the last...
My Guest Appearance on the Bob Murphy Show
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 3, 2024 | Blog, Libertarianism
Podcaster and economist Bob Murphy and I recently talked about my life as a libertarian, the outlook for liberty, and Israel. Watch it here.
TGIF: Immigration in an Nth-Best World
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 1, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
We live in an nth-best society. It's neither fully libertarian (though libertarians disagree over exactly what that would mean) nor totalitarian like the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Maoist China, or North Korea. It's somewhere in between, closer to...
TGIF: Tariffs Tax Consumers
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 9, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
We seem to forget that a tariff is a tax. It is formally levied on importers, not on foreigners or things, but since it can usually be passed along, it ends up as an indirect tax on consumers. The point of tariffs is to protect certain domestic businesses and their...
Libertarianism Is a Rejection of Identity Politics
by Josh Tullis | Feb 6, 2024 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
Politics often places people into oversimplified groups based on singular traits, attributes, or beliefs. People are rarely this one dimensional, so why is it so pervasive? It's useful for politicians to separate people into different groups to consolidate power. A...