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...
regulation
Occupational Licensing Increases Prices and Deprives People of Options
by Bryan Caplan | May 25, 2023 | Blog
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...
Government Controls You by Controlling Your Trading Partners
by Bryan Caplan | May 21, 2023 | Featured Articles
Here’s an odd thought for a libertarian: The government very rarely tells me to do anything. Once per year, the IRS orders me to pay federal income taxes. Once per year, the state of Virginia forces me to pay state income taxes and get my car inspected. Once per...
The Biden Crime Family and Our Corrupt Foreign Aid
by Jim Bovard | May 15, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
I know Romanian corruption. When I was exiting the country after investigating its collapsing economy in 1987, I made sure to bribe every guard who searched my luggage at the Bucharest airport with a pack of Kent cigarettes. But I neglected to give a pack to the...
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...
Blackrock’s Balance Sheet May Be Sicker Than You Think
by Tom Luongo | May 3, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
The big news this week was Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious firing by Fox News. The reasons for Tucker’s firing are still unclear. And even Tucker’s emergence from his man cave on Tuesday for two minutes did nothing to quell the speculation. What it did do was...
Debt Ceiling Drama Ignores Our Real Fiscal Crisis
by Ron Paul | May 2, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Last week the House passed legislation increasing the debt ceiling. The bill was supported by all but four Republicans. For some Republicans, this was the first time they had ever voted for a debt ceiling increase. Perhaps the reason they did so this time was because...
How Economic Regulation Hurts the Poor – Walter E. Williams
by Keith Knight | Apr 29, 2023 | Blog
In the name of protecting public health, California requires that an individual who seeks to perform any kind of hairstyling service must complete nine months (1,600 hours) of classes at a state-approved cosmetology school, at a tuition cost of at least $5,000, before...
Storming the Beaches at Waco
by John Weeks | Apr 19, 2023 | Featured Articles
One of the most infamous standoffs in American history ended when employees of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (and possibly the Army’s Delta Force) launched a tank and gas attack on the Branch Davidian’s Mount Carmel religious center and communal home northwest of...
Can a Libertarian Support ‘Law and Order’?
by Laurence Vance | Apr 17, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles
The election year of 1968 was a tumultuous one marked by the assassinations of Sen. Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, urban race riots, college antiwar demonstrations, and a Democratic National Convention that saw the Chicago police and the...
EU Planning to Invest Frozen Russian Assets, Give Returns to Ukraine
by Kyle Anzalone | Mar 27, 2023 | News
The European Union is developing proposals on what to do with assets seized from the Russian central bank by member states. According to European officials, the bloc may invest the money and hand the returns to Ukraine.
Big Tech, As Brought To You By the Federal Reserve
by Norman Singleton | Mar 27, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
New York Times Technology writer David Streitfeld recently examined the role the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies played in the rise and, if not fall then at least slippage, of many technology companies. Immediately after the bursting of the housing bubble (which...
Laci Green is Wrong: Democratic Competition vs. Free Market Competition
by Keith Knight | Mar 17, 2023 | Blog
In environments where there's a lot of competition, people tend to lie out their ass and you can apply this to any competitive situation. Take capitalism. As industrialization took full effect, the Federal Government had to interfere because there was so much false...
No, Wall Street Was Never Deregulated
by Norbert Michel and Nicholas Anthony | Mar 15, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
In March 2018, The New York Times ran an op‐ed about the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (the Economic Growth Act). The piece claimed the bill “would roll back or eliminate parts of the Dodd‐Frank Act.” Fast forward to March 2023,...
Blog
The Non-Existent Difference Between National Socialism and Democratic Socialism
Summary: National Socialism and Democratic Socialism both advocate institutionalized violence by the state against peaceful people only differing in rhetoric. The most popular self described Democratic Socialists in America today are Senator Bernie Sanders and...
A Response to My Memorial Day Critics
My article against Memorial Day drew a lot of ire and attention. This should not have been surprising; I was making a controversial statement. What did surprise me, however, was that many critics were self-described libertarians or former libertarians. There were many...
Ignoring Political Gossip & Sticking to Principle
https://youtu.be/ZwWHjYVY4tg In the private sector, firms must attract voluntary customers or they fail; and if they fail, investors lose their money, and managers and employees lose their jobs. The possibility of failure, therefore, is a powerful incentive to find...
The Myth of “Hyper-Rugged-Isolationist-Individualism”
Myth #1: Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other. This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal...
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...
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