Monday, January 5, 2009

Essays

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Capitalism and the Moral High Ground

Capitalism and the Moral High Ground

We who wish to advocate capitalism must take the moral high ground—which is ours by logical right—and we must never cede an inch to those who claim that self-sacrifice is a virtue. It is not. Self-interest is a virtue. Indeed, acting in one’s rational self-interest while respecting the rights of ...

Monday, December 29, 2008

War, Peace, and the State

The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence ("aggress") against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be ...

Monday, December 29, 2008

The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson

Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine ...

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Health Care Is Not a Right

The original American idea has been virtually wiped out, ignored as if it had never existed. The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents—rights which require no earning, no ...

Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Austrians Were Right

A country cannot forever depend on a central bank to keep the economy afloat and the currency functionable through constant acceleration of money supply growth. Eventually the laws of economics will overrule the politicians, the bureaucrats and the central bankers. The system will fail to respond unless the excess debt ...

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth

Government spending fails to stimulate economic growth because every dollar Congress "injects" into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. Thus, government spending "stimulus" merely redistributes existing income, doing nothing to increase productivity or employment, and therefore nothing to create additional income. Even worse, many ...

Friday, November 14, 2008

U.S. Agricultural Programs: Who Pays?

It is sometimes said that agricultural subsidies benefit those with above-average incomes at the expense of taxpayers and “everyone who eats.” Although agricultural subsidies always hit taxpayers, this generalization about the effect of farm programs on food prices is incorrect. Some agricultural programs, and the associated subsidies, lead to increased ...

Friday, November 14, 2008

Corporations versus the Market

It is no surprise, then, that throughout U.S. history corporations have been overwhelmingly hostile to the free market. Indeed, most of the existing regulatory apparatus—including those regulations widely misperceived as restraints on corporate power—were vigorously supported, lobbied for, and in some cases even drafted by the corporate elite.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Are We There Yet? Let’s Check Marx and Engels’ List…

These dedicated public servants clearly do not intend to rest until they’ve pretty much cured all the world’s visible ills, including bad breath and flat feet. If they fail, in any event, it won’t be because they were too timid about throwing the taxpayers’ money at the problems.

Monday, November 10, 2008

The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis

The myth that laissez faire exists in the present-day United States and is responsible for our current economic crisis is promulgated by people who know practically nothing whatever of sound, rational economic theory or the actual nature of laissez-faire capitalism. They espouse it despite, or rather because of, their education ...

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Five Myths About the Great Depression

Far from a free-market idealist, Hoover was an ardent believer in government intervention to support incomes and employment. This is critical to understanding the origins of the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt didn't reverse course upon moving into the White House in 1933; he went further down the path that Hoover ...

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Why The Mortgage Crisis Happened - A Historical Timeline

Confident the American people are primed for his brand of "change," Obama maintained his anti-capitalist theme. Contrary to the Obama narrative, however, free-market capitalism is not at the root of the current mortgage industry crisis, but rather the very socialism he hawks. The historical record makes this fact unmistakably clear.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's ...

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Rules vs. Prices

In deciding where to draw the lines separating these market types, every society faces the same basic questions: When should rules replace prices? Who should hold decision-making power -- buyers and sellers or government officials? Where should economics end and politics begin?

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism

If the trend of this policy will not change, the final result will only in accidental and negligible points differ from what happened in the England of Attlee and in the Germany of Hitler. The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for ...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008