As a follow-up to my recent article about F. A. Hayek's classic article "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945), I thought it worth extending Hayek's exploration of this area of social theory. In 1968 the Nobel laureate-economist delivered a lecture in German known...
Libertarianism
TGIF: No One Has a Right to Make Immigration Policy
by Sheldon Richman | May 19, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says "no one has a right to immigrate" to the United States. "We determine as Americans," he says, "what type of immigration system benefits our country. When you're doing immigration, it's not for their benefit as foreigners. It's for your...
TGIF: Ducking Hayek
by Sheldon Richman | May 12, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
May 8 marked the 124th anniversary of the birth of F. A. Hayek, the 1974 Nobel-winning economist of the Austrian school. (He died in 1992.) That makes it a good time to acknowledge one of his many contributions, his epistemic case for the free and competitive market...
Libertarianism Should Not Be Hostile to Women’s Liberation
by Kym Robinson | May 4, 2023 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
A young college woman is raped by a man. No justice is found because the rapist is an otherwise “promising young man” with a future ahead of him. His victim is merely a blip on his sterling professional conduct. Those who witnessed or were aware of the rape pretend as...
TGIF: Free Markets and the Pursuit of Happiness
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 28, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
For some time now I've thought that many people's antagonism to the market is motivated not by moral or economic objections but by aesthetic criteria. (I discuss this in What Social Animals Owe to Each Other and here.) By that I mean they simply find market relations...
TGIF: Politics Corrupts Money
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 21, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Money does not corrupt politics. Politics corrupts money. Politics as we know it is inherently corrupt; it's the way to select government officials, who then use the legalized threat of physical force, and force itself, to make peaceful people do or not do things...
Five Faulty Arguments Against Secession
by Rudolph Kohn | Apr 18, 2023 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
As a state grows, it always tries to find more ways to limit the freedom of its people. In the best case, this might take the form of pervasive surveillance and perpetual nudges. Yet it rarely stops there. The state might decide to support ill-advised adventurism...
TGIF: Let’s NOT Go to War with China
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 7, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman
The word that strikes fear in the power elite is China. It's not fear of an existential threat; rather it's fear that America is becoming second fiddle in world politics. As a result, some believe, or say they believe, that war with China is inevitable. For them,...