"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." Ever since corporate raider Gordon Gekko, the lead character in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), made that declaration, left-wing opponents of the market economy have regarded that one-liner as the only rebuttal required...
Sheldon Richman
TGIF: Are Bosses like Rulers?
by Sheldon Richman | Oct 21, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
What does the libertarian philosophy have to say about business management as an institution? Is it analogous to the state or something entirely different? Since we libertarians generally dislike seeing people being bossed around, whether by the state or anyone else,...
TGIF: Governments Create Problems; Markets Fix Them
by Sheldon Richman | Oct 14, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
My article "Complete Liberalism" prompted an unexpected challenge. An interlocutor, who says he owns a business and thus is not antibusiness, claimed that my article suggested that, unlike government regulators, businesses never get things wrong. Yet business failures...
TGIF: How the State Violated Free Speech during the Pandemic
by Sheldon Richman | Oct 7, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Is anyone shocked by this observation? Public statements, emails, and recent publicly released documents establish that the President of the United States and other senior officials in the Biden Administration violated the First Amendment by directing social-media...
TGIF: The Scourge of Conscription
by Sheldon Richman | Sep 30, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
By now Randolph Bourne's observation that "war is the health of the state" ought to be such a cliche that it would hardly need to be said. And yet, it must be said -- often -- because many still haven't gotten the word. If the state is the adversary of liberty, as it...
TGIF: Sam Harris on Saving Democracy from Voters
by Sheldon Richman | Sep 23, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Neuroscientist/philosopher Sam Harris caused quite a stir recently by defending the social networks' conspiracy (his word) to suppress news coverage of Joe Biden's son Hunter's smoking-gun laptop shortly before Election Day 2020. Harris said the suppression was...
TGIF: Question Intuition!
by Sheldon Richman | Sep 16, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
In the 1960s a popular button that New Left activists wore implored everyone to "Question Authority!" It was good advice, even though many kinds of authority exist. Some authority is chosen (for example, one's doctor) and others are compulsory (the government). But in...
TGIF: Reject Both Identity and Egalitarian Politics
by Sheldon Richman | Sep 9, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The push-back against identity politics by disillusioned leftists is welcome, but the striving to replace identity with economic equality as the guiding political principle? Not so much. I won't spend time on the problems with identity politics, a zero-sum game if...