Recently added articles from The Independent Review:
Does Regulation Prevent Fraud? The Case of Manhattan Hedge Fund
Jan 01, 2009; ... Moves to enhance and expand regulation almost invariably follow financial disasters. Losses trigger calls for government action, especially when fraud is suspected. Not only policymakers, but also the media and the wider public see regulation as the natural remedy, perhaps because people tend to ...
The Puzzle of Local Double Taxation: Why Do Private Community Associations Exist?
Jan 01, 2009; ... The most important change in local government in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century was the rise of the private community association (Dilger 1992; Foldvary 1994; McKenzie 1994; Nelson 2005). From 1980 to 2000, about half the new housing built in the United States was ...
Health Insurance before the Welfare State: The Destruction of Self-Help by State Intervention
Jan 01, 2009; ... Social scientists, especially sociologists and economists, are paying increasing attention to the concept of social capital. The expansion of its use has been so rapid diat it has led some to warn against its misuse and against overstatement of its importance (see, for example, Portes 1998, 21) ....
Kantian Individualism and Political Libertarianism
Jan 01, 2009; ... Immanuel Kant's political philosophy seems to involve a tension: a commitment to protecting individual agency and independence, yet an endorsement of state powers and duties that may impinge on that independence. The problem arises because Kant endorses a view of the individual human agent that ...
Texas Treasury Notes after the Compromise of 1850
Jan 01, 2009; ... The Republic of Texas issued substantial quantities of debt, including Treasury Notes, bonds, and special loans, from the time of its independence to its annexation and statehood (1837-45). In 1842, Texas repudiated its debt, including its "Red Back" currency (Pecquet and Thies 2007). In the ...
Gerrit Smith: A Radical Nineteenth-Century Libertarian
Jan 01, 2009; ... Gerrit Smith (1797-1874), in his day a well-known philanthropist, publicist, orator, abolitionist, temperance advocate, social reformer, and member of Congress, has been overshadowed by some of his better-known acquaintances, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Lysander Spooner, Susan B ....
Fascism: Italian, German, and American
Jan 01, 2009; ... Fascism: Italian, German, and American National Review contributing editor and Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning might appear at first glance to be another in a line of loud, ...
Who Was Edward M. House?
Jan 01, 2009; ... Edward M. House, a man now almost completely forgotten, was one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century. Given the sorry state of historical knowledge in the United States (most high school seniors do not know that the War Between the States was fought sometime between 1850 and ...
Pufendorf, Grotius, and Locke: Who Is the Real Father of America's Founding Political Ideas?
Jan 01, 2009; ... Pufendorf, Grotius, and Locke Who Is the Real Father of America's Founding Political Ideas? Scholars frequently initiate debates by offering bold claims for their proffered interpretations. The liberal and republican exchange in American political history was first cast as a ...
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Jan 01, 2009; ... * The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom By Yochai Benkler New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. xii, 515. $45.00 cloth. Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks is a comprehensive, informative, and challenging meditation on the rise of ...
Negative Liberty: Public Opinion and the Terrorist Attacks on America
Jan 01, 2009; ... * Negative Liberty: Public Opinion and the Terrorist Attacks on America By Darren W. Davis New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. Pp. XV, 276. $35.00. Wartime almost inevitably calls forth claims to restrict civil liberties in the name of ensuring national security. This theme was the ...
The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
Jan 01, 2009; ... * The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies By Bryan Caplan Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. 276. $29.95 cloth. In The Myth of the Rational Voter, Bryan Caplan presents a noteworthy challenge to a view that prevails among economists who ...
Religious Liberty in America: The First Amendment in Historical and Contemporary Perspective
Jan 01, 2009; ... * Religious Liberty in America: The First Amendment in Historical and Contemporary Perspective By Bruce T. Murray Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008. Pp. xviii, 213. $80.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. Bruce T. Murray, a former editor for the Los Angeles Times and the Orange ...
Was Keynes a Liberal?
Oct 01, 2008; ... Keynes and Neomercantilism It is now common practice to rank John Maynard Keynes as one of modern history's outstanding liberals, perhaps the most recent "great" in the tradition of John Locke, Adam Smith, and Thomas Jefferson.1 Like these men, it is generally held, Keynes was a ...
Property Insurance for Coastal Residents: Governments' "Ill Wind"
Oct 01, 2008; ... It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. -Proverb Living in coastal areas entails the risk of property damage from catastrophic storms, such as hurricanes and northeasters.1 In recent years, costs associated with such storm damage, which disproportionately affect property ...
"It Is by Unrule That Poland Stands": Institutions and Political Thought in the Polish-Lithuanian Republic
Oct 01, 2008; ... Premodern Poland does not often spring to mind when people think about the history of liberty and limited constitutional government. Although Poland is now a member of the European Union and a relatively wealthy country by world standards, it is still recovering from the severe injuries of its ...
Coordination Economics, Poverty Traps, and the Market Process: A New Case for Industrial Policy?
Oct 01, 2008; ... Market failure is the strongest reason for defending an active role for the state in the economy. Among other market-imperfection-based arguments, development economists widely use the theory of coordination failure to define a new case for industrial policy (Matsuyama 1997; Rodrik 1996, 2004, ...
Private Equity: Capitalism's Misunderstood Entrepreneurs and Catalysts for Value Creation
Oct 01, 2008; ... [T]he problem that is usually being visualized is how capitalism administers existing structures, whereas the relevant problem is how it creates and destroys them. -Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Private-equity partnerships, especially in the form of ...
Colonialism or Something Else? A Comment on Rafael Reuveny's Analysis/Colonialism or Something Else? A Reply to Ira Sharkansky's Comment
Oct 01, 2008; ... IRA SHARKANSKY The conflict between Palestine and Israel has been long and frustrating, with no end in sight. Rafael Reuveny (2008) has employed the model of colonialism to describe its history and predict its end. His article is rich and occasionally convoluted. He protects himself at ...
Caging the Dogs of War: How Major U.S. Neoimperialist Wars End
Oct 01, 2008; ... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or ...