Let’s say that Rajat Gupta, former director at Goldman Sachs on trial for insider trading, is toss in the slammer for passing on information four years ago. Let’s say that he really did receive — and then let slip — a tip that Goldman would soon be getting a nice cash infusion from Berkshire Hathaway,… read more
Now that hysteria over my original Brazil column has died down, let me add some comments and reflections about it and what gave rise to the reactions. To review, I had written a piece praising the many glorious features of Brazil and especially the way in which civilization has managed to thrive by virtue of… read more
The organization Campaign for Safe Cosmetics doesn’t just want you to be able to have new choices about the makeup or other products you buy. It wants the FDA to be able to ban and recall products. It will decide for you what is and isn’t safe. And it is prevailing against the industry itself,… read more
The great debate between capitalism and socialism suffers from a lack of clarity about definitions. This is why when Walter Block lectured in Brazil this past week, he was very careful to distinguish between crony capitalism and authentic capitalism. And it’s why when I was interviewed, the question came up immediately: What precisely do you… read more
My most surprising findings in Brazil, aside from the amazing fruits that I didn’t know existed because the U.S. government doesn’t think I need them, were the young American kids who have moved here to find economic opportunity. This I had not expected, but now fully understand. Brazil is a marvelous and massive country where… read more
Time was tight and people were rushing to catch flights. This particular terminal in Miami was usually fast, everyone knew, but for some reason, the TSA was seriously understaffed. What do they care whether people spend 90 minutes waiting in the checkpoint? They have no stake in the profitability of the airlines and no real… read more
Government has a serious problem. It’s got nothing worthwhile to do. All the cool things in life come from the private sector, and this is more obvious than ever. The market is creating whole worlds before our eyes, while the government seems ever more like a hopeless anachronism. Government’s life depends on public frenzy about… read more
Libertarianism is, obviously, an idea whose time has come. Or maybe you don’t like that term. There are plenty of others. My preference is old-fashioned. I like the term “liberal” — or maybe “radical liberal” — to distinguish my own intellectual commitments from the generation that naively believed that government could be created and limited… read more
“I’ve got better things to do than broadcast a message to the world about my lunch.” An uncountable number of people have said this or something similar to me about Twitter. I’ve stopped responding. It’s the same kind of faux snobbery that causes people to look down on Facebook, YouTube, Angry Birds, smartphones and the… read more
The buzz on the next big thing: products and services that claim to make you smarter. Forbes says it is the next trillion-dollar industry. Get-smart video games are hitting the markets. Websites and apps that promise fast results are booming. I’m a skeptic of the tools being promoted these days, but not of the overall… read more
The gas gauge broke. There was no smartphone app to tell me how much was left, so I ran out. I had to call the local gas station to give me enough to get on my way. The gruff but lovable attendant arrived in his truck and started to pour gas in my car’s tank.… read more
The 1968 epic Planet of the Apes ends with Taylor the astronaut, played by Charlton Heston, coming upon the Statue of Liberty, except that it is buried in beach sand to the chest and covered in seaweed. Only then does he realize that this strange planet is actually his own planet Earth and that he… read more
How would you like to drive from New York to Los Angeles with just one stop for gas? It seems incredible and wonderful, but it can happen. In late 2010, the Volkswagen Passat BlueMotion set a new world record for the “longest distance traveled by a standard production passenger car on a single tank of… read more
Easy prediction: Congress will not cut spending. The hysteria in Washington is for naught, as usual. There will be no “austerity,” at least not the kind brought on by cuts in government. Nor will there be curbs on the Fed. Our credit-drenched, phoney-money culture would never stand for it. But let’s just pretend that this… read more
Beginning last year, mainstream reporters began kvetching about a rather brilliant tax strategy used by Google, Apple and hundreds of other technology firms. It’s been the path to survival for these companies. It relies on a feature of digital goods that would have otherwise been impossible with physical goods. Firms are setting up revenue-receiving subsidiaries… read more
“Economics puts parameters on people’s utopias.” Yes. That’s exactly it. That’s why the politicians hate economics. That’s why the media are so… selective in which economists they call on to talk about policy. That’s why the economics departments in colleges are put down by the sociologists, philosophers, literature professors and just about everyone else who… read more
I was just down at the “feed and seed” buying two baby chicks to replace my female duck that was carried off by a bird of prey, leaving one lonely male duck behind. No one told me that ducks don’t like chicks. The rest of the story is, well, let’s just say “it’s complicated.” In… read more
It seems that the president is frustrated with Congress. What kind of legislature is this, he asks, that fails to immediately enact the will of the executive? The executive has been using a slightly different approach these days: He uses an executive order. Forget all that stuff you have read in the civics texts about… read more
Two years ago, I was the soul of generosity. I had culled through my sizeable collection of CDs and found 30 discs that I was happy to give away. My social circle went nuts, praising me as the great giver. They were so happy to have such fabulous music for free. This week, I tried… read more
For many people around the world, the first they had ever heard of the great economist Friedrich A. Hayek came from a rap video. That’s right. Some 3.4 million people have watched “Fear the Boom and Bust” since its release two years ago. It has been shown in classrooms and been featured in countless stories… read more
The functioning of millions of our consumer products has been wrecked by government regulations in ways that are extremely hard to detect and difficult to narrow down. The other day, I wrote about discovering the reason lawn mowers have mysteriously stopped working and stopped improving over the last decade or so. (I now have a… read more
To do serious business in America requires vast campaign contributions to several layers of elected politicians, an army of lobbyists in Washington, retired government employees on your board and public devotion to the American civic religion. It goes on every year and restarts every election cycle. Even then, it is hard to know if you… read more
“Launch” has been the watchword this week in the world of Laissez Faire Books. It’s been on everyone’s mind since the brilliant idea of a club first emerged in the early weeks of 2012. When the launch finally happened, I experienced one of those moments: “Pinch me so that I know I’m not dreaming.” I… read more
During the 2008 credit crisis, a horde of central bankers, Treasury officials and large corporations screamed that the end of the world was upon us — unless trillions of your money were spent (or created) to prop up the existing financial and banking systems. The presumption was that the existing structure must never be changed,… read more
Most everyone is really down on financial companies these days. What kind of scam are they running, anyway? It seems as if everywhere we turn, there are fees, fees, fees. Because most everyone has some kind of credit or debit card, the popular mind is particularly focused on them, expecting to find signs of exploitation… read more
The sad and tragic story of Andrew Wordes — the chicken farmer who was driven to despair by government harassment and killed himself last month — continues to haunt me. And it turns out to be just one of millions of cases of similar psychological torment caused by government, directly and indirectly. These are wholly… read more
When I was a kid, lawn mowers worked. You pushed them and they cut grass. The grass went into the bag. Then you emptied the bag. The results were great. There was no grass to rake. It all went into the bag, because that’s what lawn mowers did. Then the feds got involved. Or so… read more
In the last decade, something astonishing has happened that has escaped the attention of nearly every American citizen. In the past, and with good reason, we were inclined to imagine that if we were living here, we were living everywhere. We were used to being ahead. The trends of the world would follow us, so… read more
Get this: The federal bureaucrat who last month started the litigation against Apple and book publishers for e-book pricing is the same person who, back in the stone age, represented Netscape in its lawsuit against Microsoft. Recall that Microsoft was trying to give away its Internet Explorer to computer users for free. Netscape went nuts… read more
There’s so much bad news about health care these days. Maybe it’s time for some good news. One sector, technology, is advancing at a pace never seen before. Customers have a range of services to choose from, and price competition is very intense. The doctor sees you whether you have insurance or not. Customers mostly… read more
