Recently added articles from The Freeman:
Perspective: 5,999,999,999 and counting
Dec 01, 1999; ... Sometime this fall the world's population was estimated to have reached six billion. The U.N. Population Fund, which "knows" precisely how many people there should be in the world, also "knows" precisely what day the world hit six billion: October 12. In fact, no one knows precisely how ...
Unfettered powerful extremes
Dec 01, 1999; ... Over the years, intelligent and well-meaning opponents of private property and free markets have offered thoughtful and articulate arguments in support of government intervention. None of these arguments have withstood close scrutiny, but at least they were offered in the spirit of honest ...
It just ain't so!
Dec 01, 1999; ... The Fed Sets Interest Rates? Newspaper headlines across the country on July I provided some bad news for consumers: "Fed moves to raise interest rates." Associated Press writer Martin Crutsinger explained: "The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in two ...
Why Y2K?
Dec 01, 1999; ... We are fast approaching that fateful day, January 1, 2000. Whether the muchdebated Y2K problem will come in with a bang or merely a whimper, only time will tell. But it is interesting to ask why we are in this situation today. In a recent issue of The Freeman, Mark Skousen blamed the ...
Reclassifying a classic
Dec 01, 1999; ... For a century and a half, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1812-1870) has been read and reread, told and retold, performed and reperformed. Written in 1843, it is the best-known and best-loved Dickens tale. We all know the story. Or do we? Many people, both fans and critics of ...
Governement education reinvents government
Dec 01, 1999; ... Perhaps the most important principle one can ever learn about the nature of government is this: It is different from all other institutions in society because it is the only one that can legally employ force. Unfortunately, it is a principle that has been largely erased from the American memory ...
States' rights revisited
Dec 01, 1999; ... Lamenting the Supreme Court's recent batch of pro-federalism decisions, the New York Times termed the Court's newfound affinity for states' rights "Supreme mischief," "deeply disturbing" to right-thinkers everywhere. One expects such talk from dedicated cheerleaders for centralized power. What's ...
Welcome to Canada
Dec 01, 1999; ... People who are newcomers or visitors to Canada sometimes have trouble understanding how our government works so I have prepared the following short primer. Taxes are the money forcibly taken from almost every man, woman, and child in Canada by the people in government. These taxes ...
Freedom and foreign investment
Dec 01, 1999; ... This year, as the Czech people celebrate the tenth anniversary of the end of communism, the capital city of Prague serves as a shining example of what happens when the free market displaces economic planning. Each morning on the Charles Bridge in the center of the city, more than a ...
The poverty of regulation
Dec 01, 1999; ... Ronald Reagan famously asked voters durng the 1980 presidential campaign, "Are you better off than you were four years ago." A similar test can be applied to government regulation: Has it left us safer and healthier than we would have been without it? Just like the voters in 1980, we can answer ...
Decoding the North Korean enigma
Dec 01, 1999; ... Northeast Asia will never be fully secure until the communist dictatorship of North Korea passes from the scene. After threatening to test a new long-range missile, the North says it is willing to negotiate with "the hostile nations" opposing it. But whether it will actually forgo its test ...
A lesson in political management
Dec 01, 1999; ... Suppose you have just learned that the house you live in has leaky water pipes. If not attended to, the damage done by the leaks will compound and the value of the house will decline. Would you spend whatever it took to fix the problem? Or would you go out and buy an expensive new ...
The force of economics
Dec 01, 1999; ... A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ...there were economists who tried to explain economics in clear terms. Unfortunately, there are only a few in the economics profession who are concerned with making the "dismal science" understandable to the average person. Most "high-powered" ...
Other people's business
Dec 01, 1999; ... Social engineers never tire of conjuring up proofs for their own indispensability. These days those who subscribe to the "let me tell you how to live" ethic are disturbed by the explosion in consumption at all levels of society. So they have some proposals. There is nothing new, of course, in ...
China's flirtation with Keynesian economics
Dec 01, 1999; ... China's economy has made enormous progress since modernization began in 1978 under the direction of Deng Xiaoping. However, while no one expects the transition from communism toward market-based economies to be painless, the full truth is much more brutal in that China's economic future may be ...
Politics and foreign trade
Dec 01, 1999; ... The case for free trade is overwhelming, both theoretically and empirically. My last two columns developed the theoretical case, which is based on the concepts of opportunity costs and comparative advantage. Even if the people of a country have an absolute advantage in producing everything, they ...
The collectivist illusion
Dec 01, 1999; ... Some fallacies are easy to detect. Consider the fallacy of composition: take a group of human beings and ascribe to it capacities only individuals can have. "Society says," "We decided," "America is violent." Strictly speaking, none of these claims can be true. Society has no mind and mouth with ...
Capital letters
Dec 01, 1999; ... Who Wrecked the Trains? To the Editor: There is much in Gregory Bresiger's article, "Train Wreck" (The Freeman, August 1999), that is factual, but some that is misleading and false. Yes, at least some railroad leaders after World War II were "lulled" by the strong ...
Heilbroner's one-armed philosophers
Dec 01, 1999; ... "Without the government, the market as a system would not last two minutes." -RoBERT HEELBRONER1 The May-June issue of Challenge maga zine highlighted Robert Heilbroner, perhaps the best-selling economics author of all time, This year he published the seventh edition of ...
Individualism in Modern Thought from Adam Smith to Hayek
Dec 01, 1999; ... Individualism in Modern Thought from Adam Smith to Hayek by Lorenzo Infantino Routledge * 1998 * 248 pages * $85.00 Reviewed by Andrew I. Cohen Some social theorists believe that moral, political, and economic order must be imposed according to some central ...