"We're not taking away anybody's right to do things."
" 'Human Action' remains one of the great achievements in the social sciences and perhaps the single most important economic treatise of the twentieth century."
"Living a human life consists in the pursuit of a variety of values, some material, some not. Thus dividing freedom into spheres is both arbitrary and ultimately destructive."
Far less than what they’ve done TO you: Income taxation inaugurates a permanent war between the people, who want to keep what they earn, and the government, which wants as much of it as it can get. The government tries to make the war less obvious by deadening the pain when possible. The withholding tax makes it unnecessary for most Americans to write checks to the IRS; indeed, they eagerly await their refunds. But the war is part of the American psyche nonetheless. All Americans sense that an awesome…
Most if not all of [the demonstrators] likely favor a big expansion of government, but in light of our political-economic history, that would be precisely the wrong way to go because it would further empower the same coercive bureaucracy that gave us this crisis. Putting new people in charge won’t alter that fact that the bureaucracy wields powers that should not exist. What the protesters miss is that corporate power is derived from government power – it’s the most dangerous derivative. Without State power no…
History books tell us it was “The Gilded Age” (Mark Twain’s term), and the unbridled capitalism of the “Robber Barons” was running amuck, grinding the little guys underfoot in a perfectly-realized vision of the Marxist Apocalypse. The history books are mostly right — except for one thing: This wasn’t “capitalism” in operation, but a corruption of capitalism, an arrangement (still with us, by the way) whereby business and government illegally and unconstitutionally coopt each other to their mutual benefit. In such a situation, the law…
In The Freeman Online, Bruce Edward Walker brings to mind a once-popular mid-20th-century author: Perhaps no author better chronicled the disastrous, soul-crushing European political experiments of the middle half of the twentieth century than Arthur Koestler. The Hungarian-born author wrote magisterially (in English, no less; he first published in Hungarian, German, and Russian) of the follies of the Pink Decade of the 1930s in a series of political novels. Unfortunately, they’re all but forgotten in today’s university curricula. The world requires constant reminders of what…
The so-called “Progressive Era” of the last century — a time of virtually unlimited governmental intervention in the private lives of America’s citizens conducted by legions of do-gooders imbued with only the best of intentions — has never really gone away, sad to say: According to the received account of the Progressive Era, an enlightened government swept in and regulated markets for goods, labor, and capital, thereby protecting the hapless masses from the vicissitudes of unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism. The Progressives had faith that experts would…
(This is in response to a comment from S. T. Karnick.) Jim Powell decided to reassess Teddy Roosevelt‘s historical reputation in an article in The Freeman Online. Past presidents and potential future ones like TR a lot: Theodore Roosevelt has been known as “the Good Roosevelt,” “the Republican Roosevelt,” and “the conservative Roosevelt,” as distinguished from his fifth cousin Franklin, who’s credited with ushering in modern American big government. Yet promoters of big government have long recognized TR as one of their own. Biographer Frank…
Did the Founding Fathers get it right? Is the Constitution they drafted a secure basis for limited government? Many conservatives suppose so and believe the drift to big government has simply been a case of not reading the directions on the package. Last January these conservatives ordered that the Constitution be read aloud at the opening session of the House of Representatives, apparently in the hope that the reverberation of its words off the marble walls would inspire lawmakers to return to the limited government…
By Mike Gray The proper role of the parent is to set the limits so that the child does not overindulge her animal spirits. But those limits should also allow the child independence to learn and to be creative. The role of the parent is to create a happy home, which gives the child freedom but also protects him from his animal spirits. This happy home corresponds exactly to Keynes’ position (and also our own) regarding the proper role of government. — Akerlof and Shiller…
Indeed, Jeffersonian democracy became embodied in what John O’Sullivan, editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, called the “voluntary principle” or the “principle of freedom.” In 1837 he wrote, “The best government is that which governs least . . . . [Government] should be confined to the administration of justice, for the protection of the natural equal rights of the citizen, and the preservation of the social order. In all other respects, the voluntary principle, the principle of freedom . . . affords…
James A. Dorn thinks one can plot the expansion of government largesse against the readily apparent fall of responsible behavior in American society: Politicians thrive on using other people’s money and promising free lunches. The growth of government has politicized life and weakened the nation’s moral fabric. Government intervention—in the economy, the community, and society—has increased the payoff from political action and reduced the scope of private action. People have become more dependent on the State and have sacrificed freedom for a false sense of…
On The Freeman Online, William L. Anderson shows us, using a football analogy, how unpredictable the real world can be: . . . a mathematical formula cannot tell us what the U.S. economy (or any other economy) is going to do next year; nor can an algorithm tell us exactly how much revenue a new tax will collect, no matter what the Congressional Budget Office and Paul Krugman tell us. (A computer spits out the results, but it only operates according to the formula someone…
by Mike Gray The supply of gold is governed by nature; it is not, like the supply of paper money, subject merely to the schemes of demagogues or the whims of politicians. Nobody ever thinks he has quite enough money. Once the idea is accepted that money is something whose supply is determined simply by the printing press, it becomes impossible for the politicians in power to resist the constant demands for further inflation. — Henry Hazlitt In a 2004 article in The Freeman Online,…
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