In the past few days, philosophy bloggers have been writing with concern about how more philosophy departments around the country are closing, and how various Republican state legislators are trying to pass bills that cut many philosophy faculty. Most of the bloggers I’ve read seem to assume, unreflectively, that such cuts are a bad thing. To my […]
In Britain today, the economy is booming. Employment is up, growth is up, public spending is down, and the head of the International Monetary Fund has praised the country’s policies as “obviously working.” The secret to Britain’s success? Thirty years of generally liberal economic policies (liberal in the libertarian sense). That might be about to come […]
A big win for personal liberty and the Bill of Rights EVAN BERNICK. Any news that the Fourth Amendment is still being actively enforced by the courts is good news. At oral argument in Rodriguez v. United States, a case involving drug-sniffing dogs, Justice Sotomayor urged that if the arguments made by the Justice Department’s lawyer were accepted, […]
A lesson on the terrible consequences of price controls comes from Israel this week, the Blaze reports: A new Israeli law controlling the price of books and mandating guaranteed minimum compensation for writers has had the complete opposite effect of what lawmakers had intended. . . . Under the new law’s dictates, any new book that’s been […]
One this day in 1985, the Coca-Cola Company introduced “New Coke” to replace its flagship soft drink Coca-Cola. Their executives were so sure that they knew what consumers wanted, they pulled the old formula from the shelves entirely. The new product — or, rather, the new product combined with the loss of the old familiar one […]
For years, a bust of John James Cowperthwaite sat prominently in the foyer of Jimmy Lai’s Next Media office in Hong Kong, along with others of economists F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. If that’s all you ever knew about Jimmy Lai, you could at least surmise that he loves liberty and free markets. Cowperthwaite had been the […]
What that check really means by DANIEL BIER. It’s April, which means that most people will soon be getting checks from the government for overpaying on their taxes. It feels good to get a big chunk of money — especially since it was yours to begin with — but that tax “refund” cost you more […]
Reasoned agnosticism is a welcome antidote to hysteria by MAX BORDERS. Reasonable people can disagree about the nature and extent of climate change. But no one should sally forth into this hostile territory without reason and reflection. “Some scientists make ‘period, end of story’ claims,” writes biologist and naturalist Daniel Botkin in the Wall Street Journal, “that […]
Is Austrian economics an American invention? by STEVEN HORWITZ and B.K. MARCUS. Do those of us who use the word Austrian in its modern libertarian context misrepresent an intellectual tradition? We trace our roots back through the 20th century’s F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises (both served as advisors to FEE) to Carl Menger in late 19th-century Vienna, and […]
Even sticker shock can reveal something about scarcity by Robert P. Murphy. I am a mild-mannered economist by day. But by night, I am a zombie and a karaoke singer (sometimes simultaneously). So, when I travel to events, the other attendees often want to organize a karaoke outing. My recent trip to Philadelphia was no […]
Humanity hangs the light bulb JEFFREY A. TUCKER. Last week, I reread Anthem by Ayn Rand, an extraordinarily beautiful tribute to innovation as the life force of progress. It was published in 1937 but mostly drafted in Russia soon after World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. But get ready for chills when you realize that this […]
When the Court traded law and liberty for political expediency by SEAN J. ROSENTHAL. What makes a Supreme Court decision bad? And what are the worst precedents handed down by our highest court? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, and here are my nominees for the worst SCOTUS opinions to date. The standard […]
The bar exam was designed and continues to operate as a mechanism for excluding the lower classes from participation in the legal services market. Elizabeth Olson of the New York Times reports that the bar exam as a professional standard “is facing a new round of scrutiny — not just from the test takers but from law school […]
“Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday’s repugnances are today calmly accepted — though, one must add, not always for the better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it.” — Leon Kass First, let me say how happy I am to […]
Can the free market provide public education? The short answer, of course, is: yes, look around. Right now, private enterprise and nonprofit organizations provide all manner of education — from comprehensive schools with classes in the traditional academic subjects, to specialized schools that teach everything from the fine arts to the martial arts, from dancing […]