“Today the tenets of this nineteenth-century philosophy of liberalism are almost forgotten. In the United States “liberal” means today a set of ideas and political postulates that in every regard are the opposite of all that liberalism meant to the preceding...
F.A. Hayek
Remembering Rose Wilder Lane
by Timothy Sandefur | Dec 6, 2022 | Featured Articles
It was on this day in 1886 that the journalist and author Rose Wilder Lane was born in a little house on the prairie that she and her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, would later make famous. A brilliant, moody, and independent spirit, Rose was eventually to become one...
TGIF: Governments Create Problems; Markets Fix Them
by Sheldon Richman | Oct 14, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
My article "Complete Liberalism" prompted an unexpected challenge. An interlocutor, who says he owns a business and thus is not antibusiness, claimed that my article suggested that, unlike government regulators, businesses never get things wrong. Yet business failures...
The Cult of Keynes and Its Origins
by Robert Blumen | Jun 8, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles
The British Austrian economist W.H. Hutt was a great critic of Keynes’s economic theories. However, his speculations on why the New Economics revolution happened are even more fascinating. Hutt shows it to be a fundamentally dishonest undertaking. Keynes held a...
Why Politics Is So Acrimonious
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 12, 2021 | Blog, Justice, Libertarianism
If we wish to understand what's wrong with today's politics, we ought to consider something F. A. Hayek pointed out long ago. It should have been obvious, but it escapes many people: namely, the more power government officials have over our lives, the more people will...
F.A. Hayek’s Conception of Private, Fiat Money
by Robert Murphy | Sep 17, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles
The most famous Austrian economist is 1974 Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek. Because of his moderate views excusing state interventions in various circumstances, hardcore Rothbardians tend to regard Hayek as less than pure in many areas. However, one area where Hayek is...
How New York Turned Nursing Homes Into ‘Slaughter Houses’
by Jon Miltimore | May 13, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles
At an April 23 press conference, Gov. Andrew Cuomo sounded indignant when a reporter asked if anyone had objected to New York’s policy of forcing nursing homes to admit recently discharged COVID-19 patients. “They don’t have the right to object,” Cuomo answered before...
Why Central Planning by Medical Experts Will Lead to Disaster
by Gary Galles | Apr 10, 2020 | Economics, Events, Featured Articles
A great deal of the coverage of the COVID-19 crisis has been apocalyptic. That is partly because “if it bleeds, it leads.” But it is also because some of the medical experts with media megaphones have put forward potentially catastrophic scenarios and drastic plans to...
Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression of 1920
by Tom Woods | Apr 6, 2020 | Economics, Events, Featured Articles
It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones — and often deliberately so. Far...
Real vs Fake Health Care Reform, and How to Tell the Difference
by Jeffrey A. Tucker | Mar 26, 2017 | Economics, Featured Articles
You want to know why the “freedom caucus” has balked at passing the Trump-backed Ryancare health care proposal? Because the package does not address the core problem of the existing system. They are leaning – correctly – on a brilliant insight from F.A. Hayek. Let’s...
Break Up the USA
by Lew Rockwell | Feb 21, 2017 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
Some of our assumptions are so deeply embedded that we cannot perceive them ourselves. Case in point: everyone takes for granted that it’s normal for a country of 320 million to be dictated to by a single central authority. The only debate we’re permitted to have is...
Fidel Castro: Tearing the Mask Off Government
by Michael Maharrey | Dec 2, 2016 | Blog
The brutal reign of Fidel Castro strips the mask right off the face of government. Western “democracies” and “free societies” create the illusion of consent and paint a benevolent face on government. But at their core, all governments everywhere fundamentally operate...
Blog
The Lesson From Germany and Korea
Institutions are, of course, in some sense the products of culture. But, because they formalize a set of norms, institutions are often the things that keep a culture honest, determining how far it is conducive to good behaviour rather than bad. To illustrate the...
Occupational Licensing Increases Prices and Deprives People of Options
When you shop online, vendors usually give you a bunch of different ways to sort your options. Take Amazon: One popular sorting option – especially for customers with low income – is “Price: Low to High.” You’ve probably used it yourself many times. This...
Free Book: An Anarchist Critique of the COVID Mandates
I’ve had the opportunity to write a short book offering what is essentially an anarchist critique of COVID mandates. This includes the accusation that states did most of the killing rather than the virus. The 123-page book, Measuring the Mandates: Questioning the...
Democratic Socialist Turns Libertarian! #PorcFest2023
https://youtu.be/G2eSuiXNaaQ Once you accept the principle of government, namely that there must be a judicial monopoly and the power to tax, once you accept this principle incorrectly as a just principle, then any idea or any notion of restraining or limiting...
What War Hawks Would Sound Like If They Weren’t Psychopaths
Modern warfare almost always leads to killing lots of innocents; if governments were held to the same standards as individuals, these killings would be manslaughter, if not murder. This doesn’t mean that war is never justified. But the reasonable hawkish mood is...
The Free Market Serves the Masses, Governments Commit Genocide
Amazon is simply the best store that ever existed, by far, with incredible selection and unearthly convenience. The price: cheap. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media let us socialize with our friends, comfortably meet new people, and explore even the most...
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Voluntaryist Handbook
by Keith Knight
Hotter Than The Sun: Time To Abolish Nuclear Weapons
by Scott Horton
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Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism
by Scott Horton