What’s the difference between a gas station and a hospital?
We hear a lot of Republican and Democrat talking points about healthcare. As Libertarians, it’s important that people understand that …
Economics
Posts on economics
Posts on economics
Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 – Day 3
It has taken me a few days to finish this post. Unfortunately, I spent Sunday driving back home and Monday …
Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 – Day 2
The second day of the Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 was quite exciting. From lunch at the Mellow Mushroom munching on …
Freedom: My Anti-Gov
Freedom subsumes individual liberty and personal responsibility. If individuals are free to act and also held responsible to bear the consequences for their actions, good outcomes will be reinforce correct behavior and bad outcomes will provide a learning experience. When government gets in the way of this feedback loop, it prevents the development of virtue and merely subjects the individual to the will of the State.
Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 – Day 1
The first day of the Austrian Scholars Conference 2010 was marked by greeting old friends, making new friends, and meeting …
Free Trade Now!
Free trade exists when governments do not interfere with commercial transactions between individuals domestically and internationally. Free trade makes America and the world better off.
Enjoy Capitalism!
Capitalism is the only moral social system. Only a capitalist system allows you to act in your own interest, to keep what you have worked for and trade it with other willing individuals. For much of human history, wealth has been produced primarily by looting or enslaving others. Under capitalism wealth is created by serving others, by creating values for them.
Earth Liberation
Government policies cannot mimic the dynamism and spontaneity present in the market, and, in fact, more often than not create perverse and unintended consequences. The solution to environmental concerns is not for more government intervention but for the application of a free market approach, which encapsulates entrepreneurship, property rights, and voluntary transactions.
Why being a candidate can be beneficial for liberty
Though I think it is misguided to believe that electoral politics is the primary means of effecting change for the …
The Dismal Year
One year ago today, Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office for his first full day as President. So far, …
Top 10 Disasters of the Obama Administration in 2009
Executive Director of the Libertarian Party Wes Benedict put together a retrospective of the executive administration this past year. Any …
Economics Has the Answer: What’s the Question?
By Edmund Opitz. Adam Smith’s monumental achievement was to enlarge the individual person’s freedom of action in economic affairs, and …
Ethics and Business
Business and the businessman have had a bad press, almost uniformly. Do you remember the television show whose hero was a businessman? The show that portrayed this businessman as a person of integrity and vision, who labored long hours to produce a product that supplied a genuine need, which he marketed at prices people could afford? Who treated his employees with generosity and consideration, and his customers with unfailing courtesy? Who was a devoted family man, active in civic affairs, and a churchman?
Freedom and Majority Rule
By Edmund Opitz Lord Northcliffe, the publisher of the London Times, came to this country a few years after World …
Isaiah’s Job
by Albert Jay Nock —- One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded …
Black Magic
By Edmund Opitz Every individual tries to economize his energies by satisfying his needs and desires with a minimum of …
Perspectives on Religion and Capitalism
By Edmund Opitz The two major terms in my title are subject to extravagant misunderstanding and occasional abuse. Some of …
The Nobility of the Bourgeoisie
By Edmund Opitz If the man from Mars were to ask any one of us to point out the business …
Intellectual Property and Libertarianism
Stephan Kinsella’s presentation at Mises University this past July is an excellent introduction to intellectual property, and to rights theory …
Universal Health Care is the new Post Office
Cash for Clunkers made no sense whatsoever. The Climate-Change Bill was just moronic. Universal Health Care, though, is going to …
10 Things I Hate About Taxes: Epilogue
No, this is not #11, it really is just an epilogue – or an afterthought… I hope you attended or …
10 Things I Hate About Taxes: The Full Series
Ah taxation, how we despise thee. You make some richer, but most poorer. You daily remind us that we live …
10 Things I Hate About Taxes #10: Lost Prosperity
This is the tenth article in a series on taxation leading up to Tax Day, April 15. I think I’ve …
10 Things I Hate About Taxes #9: Taxation is Theft
I have already said and illustrated this numerous times in previous articles, but I will say it once again: Taxation is theft, period. To continue this theme, I’d like to show what a few of my favorite laissez-faire economists had to say about the evils of taxation.