An Essential Resource for Enlightened Minds Since 1972
FRANKLIN Delano Roosevelt famously used the term “forgotten man” in a 1932 speech to describe those at the bottom of the economic pyramid whom, he felt, government should aid. But the originator of the phrase “forgotten man” — William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) — had a whole different meaning in mind. Sumner aimed to expose the… read more
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I hit a nerve whenever I write about voting and democracy. Point out the sheer lunacy of the civic religion and a certain group of readers will blow their stacks, sending back long emails stuffed with long words, calling me things like “intellectually vacuous” and insisting I’m full of “self-aggrandizement.” Such is the case with… read more
Read More CommentLet’s say that a thief demands $100 and lets you keep $10 because he likes your suit. He calls that a deduction. The next day, he demands the whole $110. He says that he is not stealing more. He is only eliminating deductions and closing loopholes. That’s the GOP’s tax plan in a nutshell. They… read more
Read More CommentA huge pool of money lies just beyond the grasp of government’s itching fingers: private pension funds. Various money-grab schemes have been floated, including a legal requirement that all private pension funds contain a set percentage of Treasury bonds. The most innovative scheme comes from California, which is attempting to do an end run around… read more
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Proponents of liberty argue over what parts of the economy or society government should not touch. Government should get out the education business, stay out of health care, and even leave roads and infrastructure to the private sector. But when it comes to criminal justice, even many libertarians think government should supply the police and… read more
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What is the world’s smallest country? Monaco? Nope. Malta? Too big. Even Vatican City with a mere population of 770 is huge in comparison. It’s called Sealand, founded and ruled by Paddy Roy Bates, a remarkable man who died this week at the age of 91. He was the original pirate radio operator and the… read more
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IN A LENINGRAD UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM in the early 1920s, as the professor drones on about orthodox Marxist theory, a young woman with an intense gaze is writing furiously in her notebook. The woman is Alisa Rosenbaum, later to be famous as Ayn Rand, and her jottings do not concern the relationship between dialectical materialism and… read more
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Mortgage credit is tight, and extremely so. Romney and Obama were even questioned about it in their first debate. Think of all the potential issues that presidential candidates might address–fiscal cliffs, budget deficits, mass unemployment. That they were even asked about this matter illustrates how much government sponsors and supports the nation’s housing market. People… read more
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When children play with Legos, violence sometimes ensues. “He knocked down my tower!” “Only because she built it to look exactly like the one I made, and that’s not fair. I made mine first!” All the parents I’ve ever met handle this situation by pointing out to the aggressor that it is perfectly acceptable for… read more
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Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, the ebook of the week in the Laissez Faire Club, is a story about a government that hates, fears, and bans technology precisely because it wants to keep the people enslaved in a primitive state of being. Preposterous right? Wrong: this is going on every day right in the United States,… read more
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“Fiat” is money with no intrinsic value beyond whatever an issuing government is able to enforce. When it enjoys a monopoly as currency, fiat inevitably turns the free market functions of money inside out. Instead of being a store of value, the currency becomes a point of plunder through monetary policies such as quantitative easing.… read more
Read More CommentSpreading the ideas of freedom and glories of free markets is an ongoing job. One thing we do here at the Laissez Faire Club is resurrect the works of previous generations of freedom fighters. It is the Rothbards, the Chodorovs, and Nocks on whose shoulders we stand. The works of these champions of laissez faire… read more
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There is a scene in the movie Barfly where a woman turns to the main character and says “I can’t stand people. I hate them. Do you hate them?” He turns to her and drawls, “No, but I seem to feel better when they’re not around.” By his own report, Albert Nock didn’t like people… read more
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In large parts of the oldest civilized region of the world, you will find in nearly every room a pretty blue charm that looks like an eye. It’s in the front entrance of homes, somewhere in every room, on boats, in airports, in restaurants, and built into the designs of everything from wallpaper to grocery… read more
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A trip to Hans and Gulcin Hoppe’s Property and Freedom Society (PFS) salon in the beautiful port city of Bodrum is unforgettable in so many ways. The “politically correct-free zone,” as professor Hoppe described it in his introductory remarks, is chicken soup for the isolated anarchist’s soul, with four days spent with the creme de… read more
Read More CommentI’ve found it: the organizing cell of what must be the world’s most dangerous intellectuals. It is right in this room where 100 people now sit, listening and discussing. But instead of heated and sweaty plotting, what we find instead is the atmosphere is of a 19th-century salon: polite, smart, fun. It’s the ambition and… read more
Read More CommentIn the Saturday Review of January 7, 1933, the famed belles-lettres author James Branch Cabell commented on Isabel Paterson’s latest novel, Never Ask the End (1933). Cabell wrote, Mrs. Paterson has made … a book which any tolerably civilized American must regard, throughout, with a sort of charmed squirming.… Here is an honest portrait.… Thus… read more
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The great news for humanity: Economic freedom around the world is on the rise. This means liberation for millions and billions of people. What a change from 20 years ago, when so many lived under despotism and socialist slavery. These people are freer, and getting freer. More people avail themselves to the global division of… read more
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This book may change your life. I know, because it changed mine. When I was in junior high, I told anybody who cared to listen that I wanted to be a theoretical physicist when I grew up — Richard Feynman was my hero at the time. Even so, by the time I had graduated from… read more
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Why a third round of quantitative easing? Sure, Ben Bernanke says that it is all about jobs and growth, as shown by various 60-year theories pushed by Lord Keynes. Really? Let’s get serious. This approach has done nothing over five years. It has prolonged the suffering. Another round virtually guarantees continued economic stagnation. QE is… read more
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A month ago, a family I know returned from a trip in which they stayed in an ordinary hotel off the interstate in Virginia. They arrived late and left the next morning. The parents slept in the bed while the kids slept on the sleeper sofa. The kids had red welts all over their faces… read more
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You know the cliches: It’s a small world after all We are the world. Globalism rules Earth is our neighborhood now and every citizen is a next-door neighbor. All that’s more or less true in the digital sector. I’ve emailed and texted using translation programs that allow me to speak with people in languages I… read more
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Central banks around the world are ramping up money production to revive their economies. What should investors do? It’s easy, according to Jeff Kilburg, founder and CEO of Killir Kapital Management. His advice is to buy. Buy what? Almost anything. “Analysts? They can go on vacation at least until after Christmas,” Kilburg says. “You can… read more
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THAT LUDWIG VON MISES was one of the greatest economists of the 20th century should never be doubted. Mises never worked in scientific or popular obscurity despite various mythologies on left and right that are told. Prior to World War I, Mises had established himself as a leading economic theorist among the younger generation in… read more
Read More Comment“How the heck does this thing work?” I struggled with the new can opener for 20 minutes before giving up. This thing doesn’t work. Has the government wrecked the can opener too? Hmmm, maybe I should read the instructions. I had done the “guy thing” and attempted to use a new product without bothering to… read more
Read More CommentYou probably don’t realize this, but your finances are standing behind more than a trillion dollars of the bank deposits of large corporations and municipalities housed at America’s largest banks. It all began in 2008, as it usually does. During the crash, the FDIC instituted the TAG (Transaction Account Guarantee) program. TAG provides UNLIMITED coverage… read more
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Cover the kids’ ears! Hide their eyes! Shuffle the weak and frail from the room! A politician running for president has uttered a heresy that brings into question the holy grail of democratic politics. Romney has failed to pretend as if the country is one big happy family that uses our glorious voting system to… read more
Read More Comment In announcing QE3, Ben Bernanke’s words betrayed not the slightest doubt that this is the right thing. More Fed bond purchases, combined with three more years of zero interest rates, he said, will quicken economic growth and cause unemployment to fall. And the punditry class all nodded in unison. I know that this is government… read more
Read More Comment What kind of events are worth reporting on in real time, with updates every few seconds? Such events have to be pretty dramatic. Well, the release of the iPhone 5 apparently qualifies. The tech blogs were all over it, and so were the wire services and big papers. A moment to celebrate? Sure! It was… read more
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If you control the language, you control the argument If you control the argument, you control information If you control information, you control history If you control history, you control the past He who controls the past controls the future.” – Big Brother, 1984 The deepest form of social control is to govern what a… read more
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