Freeman back issues from October 2008:
Hubris in the First Degree
Oct 01, 2008; ... "I will commit two billion dollars each year on clean-coal research and development. We will build the demonstration plants, refine the techniques and equipment, and make clean coal a reality." That's what John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said back on June 18 in ...
The Holiday That Isn't
Oct 01, 2008; ... I know it's only October, but that's late enough in the year for most people to have already begun thinking of the holidays just around the corner. We will each observe the traditional ones according to our personal wishes-a precious right won for us by past and present patriots. Allow ...
The Subprime Crisis Shows That Government Intervenes Too Little in Financial Markets? It Just Ain't So!
Oct 01, 2008; ... Start with two assumptions. No. 1: Banking and financial markets are inherently unstable. No. 2: Government intervention into banking and financial markets can only stabilize (never destabilize). You'll find it easy to conclude that any period of market instability we experience, like the recent ...
Let's Not Be Energy Independent
Oct 01, 2008; ... "Energy independence" is a term that sounds good but falls apart on closer examination. Although the United States could achieve energy independence, we could do so only at an enormous cost. Energy "dependence" is much cheaper and much more desirable. Before considering the costs and ...
Politicians Eye the Oil Market
Oct 01, 2008; ... With oil prices setting records every week and gas prices topping $4 per gallon, voters are getting increasingly angry. This naturally makes the politicians nervous, so they do what they can to divert blame from themselves at all costs. Two easy targets are "Big oil" and speculators. In this ...
Mendacity by Metaphor
Oct 01, 2008; ... Once upon a time, law-abiding citizens acknowledged that they wanted lawbreakers punished. They did not say the offenders "needed" punishment. When they used the term "need" metaphorically-as when an outlaw in a bar told his buddies that one of their adversaries "needed" killing-they knew what ...
Making Social Security More Harmful
Oct 01, 2008; ... Social Security is a fundamentally flawed system. If a private firm offered such a retirement system and made the same claims for it that the federal government makes for Social Security, that firm would quickly become a poster child for corporate fraud, and its managers would soon be convicted ...
Language, Loyalty, and Liberty
Oct 01, 2008; ... The equanimity with which Americans have watched their freedoms flee puzzles many of us, but perhaps I've solved the mystery: they're too busy worrying about the English language instead. They fear its imminent expiration, however exaggerated reports of that death may be. Some blame rap music, ...
The Great Escape from the Great Depression
Oct 01, 2008; ... Questions about the Great Depression may be usefully framed as pertaining to three distinct issues: the Great Contraction, the extraordinarily severe economic decline from 1929 to 1933; the Great Duration, the persistence of subpar economic performance for more than a decade; and the Great ...
Commerce, Markets, and Peace: Richard Cobden's Enduring Lessons
Oct 01, 2008; ... The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace and the spread of commerce and the diffusion of education than upon the labour of Cabinets or Foreign Offices. -RICHARD COBDEN (1804-1865) In a 1944 review of F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom, George Orwell declared, ...
Beyond Municipal Wireless
Oct 01, 2008; ... The harsh daylight of fiscal reality has rudely awakened city administrators across the country to the unfeasibility of funding or partnering in citywide consumer wireless-broadband services. Over the past year, city after city has retreated from large-scale municipal wireless projects ....
Capital Letters
Oct 01, 2008; ... Mistreating the Constitution? If recent items in Tlie Freeman are any indication, its writers take a rather dim view of the Constitution and the Framers thereof. While I couldn't agree more regarding the people who wrote our federal compact (with a few exceptions), I must take issue with ...
Legalize All Drugs
Oct 01, 2008; ... Reading the Neu' York Post's popular Page Six gossip page recently, I was surprised to find a picture of me, followed by the lines: "ABC'S John Stossel wants the government to stop interfering with your right to get high. The crowd went silent at his call to legalize hard drugs." I had ...
Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
Oct 01, 2008; ... Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism by Jörg Guido Hülsmann Ludwig von Mises Institute * 2007 * 1143 pages * $50.00 Biographer Guido Hülsmann has written a magnificent book, describing in detail not only the life of Ludwig von Mises, but also his writings, his intellectual development, ...
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Oct 01, 2008; ... The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein Metropolitan Books/Picador * 2007/2008 * 576 pages * $28.00 hardcover; $16.00 paperback The core thesis of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine is that American foreign and domestic policies of the last 30 years have shaped a new ...
The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays
Oct 01, 2008; ... The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays by Thomas Szasz Syracuse University Press * 2007 * 168 pages * $19.95 Thomas Szasz's most recent book is, in a sense, not recent at all. The Medicalization of Everyday Life is a compilation of 16 essays Szasz published over the last ...
The Antitrust Religion
Oct 01, 2008; ... The Antitrust Religion by Edwin S. Rockefeller Cato Institute * 2007 * 124 pages * $16.95 Many years ago when I was in law school, I listened to a talk by a fellow student on antitrust law. Right at the beginning of his presentation, he earnestly stated that the antitrust laws were a ...
Worker Freedom in Peril
Oct 01, 2008; ... The Alliance for Worker Freedom (AWF) recently published its 2007 Index of Worker Freedom (IWF).The index ranks each of the 50 states on the basis of ten variables that affect the freedom of workers. "Freedom" is defined properly as the absence of interferences with individual worker choices ....