Today’s Love of Power Has Eroded Our Freedom by LAWRENCE W. REED. December 29, 2014, is the 205th anniversary of the birth of William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), quoted below. This article appeared in the May 2007 issue of The Freeman. “We look forward to the time when the power of love will replace the love of […]
Why and how we should seek to restore a free market in land by NATHAN SMITH. I once knew a man who was finishing his basement so that his daughter and son-in-law could live there. I spent a lot of hours down there with a nail gun before the city planners nixed the project. My […]
America has been spying on its citizens for a hundred years by GARY MCGATH. We think of mass surveillance as a product of modern technology—applying computing power to scoop up communications and metadata in bulk. But large-scale spying on Americans got its real start in 1917, when the United States entered World War I. The […]
The latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act might let them by EVAN BERNICK. Does the law mean what it says, or whatever government officials want it to mean? That is the fundamental question confronting the Supreme Court in King v. Burwell, the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act. While the answer would be uncontroversial […]
Big Gov and Big Biz. Are they holding hands, shaking hands, or boxing? It depends on the day and the issue. But while Big Biz hardly seems like a sympathetic character, Big Gov always has the upper hand. Remember Arthur Anderson? Perhaps not. It used to be the biggest accounting firm around. Then the Justice […]
Peer-to-peer exchange opens new frontiers for freedom and innovation by ZENA AZIZ. The sharing economy is changing the way people interrelate. Interactions have gone from selling used items on eBay, to renting apartments on Craigslist, and now requesting rides from a stranger through our smartphones. The peer-to-peer economy is morphing the culture of millennials into […]
4 things more important than the written code by JOSEPH S. DIEDRICH. What change do you want to see in the world? Maybe you want marijuana to be legal. Or you want to curtail police brutality. Or perhaps you want to reduce the racial disparity in prisons. One way to effect these changes is to […]
Corporations are often accused of despoiling the environment in their quest for profit. Free enterprise is supposedly incompatible with environmental preservation, so that government regulation is required. Such thinking is the basis for current proposals to expand environmental regulation greatly. So many new controls have been proposed and enacted that the late economic journalist Warren […]
Warmed over regulations from 80 years ago won’t fix the Web by LAWRENCE W. REED. Last month, the Federal Communications Commission launched a historic power grab over the Internet, euphemistically known as “net neutrality,” based on a Great Depression-era law to regulate public utilities. While entrepreneurs are pursuing cutting-edge business models and developing previously unimaginable technologies, Washington bureaucrats […]
We often hear that individual investors are myopic. They make decisions based on a relatively short time horizon, so forget about the long run. That’s why we need government officials to step in with regulations, as well as corrective taxes and subsidies, to guide the market toward long-term social goals. Or so the story goes. […]
The Perceived Problems of Global Population Growth Are Failures of Governance by CHRISTOPHER LINGLE… Once again the Bush administration has come under fire for a decision that runs counter to conventional wisdom. Undeterred by widespread denunciations after opposing the Kyoto Protocol, it announced that funds appropriated by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) […]
The smart choice is innovation at the edge by ANDREAS ANTONOPOULOS… “Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power.” — Eric Hoffer In computer and communications networks, decentralization leads to faster innovation, greater openness, and lower cost. Decentralization creates the conditions for competition […]
According to an American Dream article, “Al Gore, Agenda 21 and Population Control,” there are too many of us and it has a negative impact on the earth. Here’s what the United Nations Population Fund said in its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009, “Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate”: “Each birth results not only […]
A Huffington Post blogger claims the state’s recovery debunks laissez faire by COREY IACONO, MATT PALUMBO… “US Uncut” founder Carl Gibson is known for creating shocking, if dubious, viral memes about the economy. On the progressive group’s Facebook page, he’s claimed that Switzerland is such an equal society because they have a minimum wage of $50,000 a […]
According to Eckhart Tolle, the popular author of spiritual books including The Power of Now, happiness is only possible in the present, the now. Past and future are beyond reach, and so “the present moment is all you ever have.” He writes: Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen […]