Sheldon | The Libertarian Institute

Sheldon Richman Articles

TGIF: Full versus Shrunken Liberalism

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 11, 2024

Language, like the old common law and other customs, is a decentralized, undesigned, spontaneous institution. It serves humanity well. Nothing is perfect, of course, but no alternative—if one were conceivable—could hold a candle to it. One of the downsides is that...

TGIF: Tariffying Trade-Warmonger Trump

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 4, 2024

"The word tariff, properly used, is a beautiful word. One of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard. It’s music to my ears." —Donald Trump The once and possibly future president threatens to wage economic warfare against countries and companies everywhere if they...

TGIF: Who Cares about Inequality?

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 27, 2024

What accounts for the preoccupation with income and wealth inequality? We hear about it every day. Isn't our absolute living standard what matters and whether it is improving or deteriorating? I'll bet that's what regular people care about. However, the professional...

TGIF: “We Are All Social Engineers Now”

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 20, 2024

I don't know if anyone has actually said, "We are all social engineers now," but someone might as well have. (The variation "We are all Keynesians now" was declared a long time ago, even by Milton Friedman, although see this.) When I say "all," of course, I don't mean...

TGIF: The Russians Are Coming? The Russians Are Coming?

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 13, 2024

Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an...

TGIF: What Government Has Wrought

by Sheldon Richman | Sep 6, 2024

Imagine two candidates for president, and ask yourself who is more likely to win. Candidate A observes that people are facing generally rising prices. Their total at the supermarket checkout is higher than last year. Filling up the car at the gas station takes a...

TGIF: Doing Good at a Profit

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 30, 2024

[P]eople started to believe that the bourgeoisie and its economic activities of trade and innovation were virtuous, or at least tolerable. In every successful lurch into modern riches from Holland in 1650 to the United States in 1900 to China in 2000, one sees a...

TGIF: Back to Barbarism

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 23, 2024

Has Kamala Harris inadvertently done free-market advocates a favor? Let's not get too hopeful, but maybe. How so? By pandering to voters and marketing herself as a consumer watchdog who will stamp out (undefined) supermarket "price gouging." This could create teaching...

TGIF: Gaslighting

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 16, 2024

I wonder who's gaslighting us now. Here are some of the major perpetrators: The pundits and pseudo-economists of all tribes who try to convince us that the government can spend, borrow, and create money almost without limit or harm. What happens when interest on the...

TGIF: Khan Controlling Trade

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 9, 2024

Lina Khan is a Washington, D.C., rock star. She is not only President Joe Biden's celebrated chief of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC); she's also a favorite of J. D. Vance, Donald Trump's pick for vice president. This Lina Khan must really have something going for...

TGIF: Democracy as Religion

by Sheldon Richman | Aug 2, 2024

During a conversation with someone who loves representative democracy but hates America's current political situation, I pointed out a problem with his view. The current situation, I said, is a product of representative democracy. So you can't have the system without...

TGIF: Damn Consumers!

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 26, 2024

Global free trade is about individual, not national, freedom—for consumers and producers who import raw materials, tools, and semi-finished products. Aside from its role as an aspect of personal liberty, free trade's efficiency benefits have been well-established...

TGIF: The Populist Trap

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 19, 2024

If you care about individual freedom and general prosperity, you'll want to avoid all shades of populism like the plague. It is economic illiteracy proudly proclaimed and writ large. As an alternative to libertarianism, it is bad in its own right—freedom is not on its...

TGIF: Culture without Romance

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 12, 2024

"The entire history of the human race, the rise of man from the caves, has been marked by transfers of cultural advances from one group to another and from one civilization to another." So said economist, social philosopher, and historian Thomas Sowell in a 1990...

TGIF: On the Pursuit of Happiness

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 5, 2024

The most remarkable phrase in the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary we just celebrated, is the pursuit of happiness. Looking back 248 years, that phrase may strike the modern ear as strange for a political document. But it apparently did not seem that way...

« Older Entries

Next Entries »

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

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.

More Info

Coming to Palestine