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Sheldon Richman Articles

TGIF: Individuals, Not America, First

by Sheldon Richman | May 16, 2025

Let's hear no more about America First! It's a fraud, a cover for collectivist nationalism, and a distraction from what matters. (It also looks like camouflage for Trump Family First, but let's take it at face value for now.) On foreign policy, America First does not...

TGIF: On the Importance of Undesigned Order

by Sheldon Richman | May 9, 2025

Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian approach to economics, was not the first or last thinker to see similarities between a society and a living organism, suggesting the existence of undesigned, spontaneous order. The names Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, before...

TGIF: On Value and Freedom

by Sheldon Richman | May 2, 2025

To live is to act. To act is to choose. To choose is to prefer. To prefer is to pursue values—that is, to value. That's logic-guided observation. Ego sum, ergo aestimo: I am, therefore I value. (HT: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Ludwig von Mises.) Next: to think is to act....

TGIF: More on Menger and Value

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 25, 2025

Consumer goods are also called finished goods. The products we buy at the supermarket and other retail stores have, in less finished form, passed through many stages (including distribution), reaching back to the original factors of production: land and labor. Land...

TGIF: Menger on Trade

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 18, 2025

Even when a line on a map separates two individuals, trade is still trade—that is, mutually beneficial cooperation. Whether the line separates towns, cities, counties, states, or countries, it does not matter. The transactions are win-win. We could do quite well...

TGIF: The Objectively Invaluable Menger

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 11, 2025

Many people are uneasy with the free market. I think that's because they subscribe, implicitly if not explicitly, to the labor theory of value. Workers, people lament, seem not to reap the full and just reward for their labors. Belief in the labor theory puts...

TGIF: The Great Carl Menger

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 4, 2025

There can be no doubt among competent historians that if ... the Austrian School has occupied an almost unique position in the development of economic science, this is entirely due to the foundations laid by this one man.... [I]ts fundamental ideas belong fully and...

TGIF: “Liberalism and Capitalism”

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 28, 2025

Ludwig von Mises's 1927 path-breaking work in political theory speaks to the current generations. In section 5 of his introduction to Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, Mises sounds impeccably relevant in describing how the opponents of liberalism and the market...

TGIF: The Income Stagnation Myth

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 21, 2025

Many people, including some free-market advocates, think Americans are materially worse off today than they were in the 1970s. Some subscribers to that view blame globalization, that is, free trade in goods, which means in labor services. By any reasonable measure,...

TGIF: Say No to a Sovereign Wealth Fund

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 14, 2025

Donald Trump wants to create a sovereign wealth fund (SWF). It's a bad idea if your standard is freedom, free enterprise, and free markets. That's not Trump's standard, but we already knew that. A sovereign wealth fund is a government-run investment program. Where...

TGIF: A New Washington Post?

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 7, 2025

If Jeff Bezos is as good as his word, the advocates of full liberty will owe him a standing ovation. As everyone knows by now, Amazon.com founder Bezos, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time—a man whose profit-making activities have benefitted mankind...

TGIF: The Aim of Classical Liberalism

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 28, 2025

These are dark days for liberalism. I mean full, across-the-board, laissez-faire free-market, classical liberalism, otherwise known as libertarianism. While some budget-cutting and bureaucracy slimming will probably go through, those steps, though necessary to advance...

TGIF: Free the Housing Market!

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 21, 2025

Economist Bryan Caplan has done it again. His latest graphic nonfiction book is Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, illustrated by Ady Branzei and published by the Cato Institute. (His first was Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of...

TGIF: Emergency! Emergency?

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 14, 2025

Look, as a libertarian I think the list of federal entities to be abolished soon should include the: Consumer Financial Protection Board, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Reserve System,...

TGIF: Free Speech Restored?

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 7, 2025

Don't get accustomed to me praising Donald Trump, but exceptions will occur now and then. Trump is no principled friend of liberty, not by a long shot. Judging by most of his actions and words, he recognizes no impenetrable boundary between the government and the...

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Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

What Social Animal's Owe to Each Other

by Sheldon Richman

Book Animalssm

These essays, written over the past 20 years, have a single underlying theme: namely, that we human beings, as social animals, need individual freedom to fully flourish.

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Coming to Palestine