Can foreign-policy noninterventionists publicly criticize foreign tyrannies without giving credence to the war party? Yes -- if they try. At least I hope so. Being a noninterventionist does not require agnosticism about, much less approval of, despotic regimes. U.S....
Sheldon Richman
TGIF: Immigration and Liberty
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 2, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Forbidding freedom of movement to aspiring migrants strikes at the liberty not only of those individuals but also of citizens and legal residents of the United States. That's the way it is with immigration. Indeed, that's the way it is with freedom. The government...
TGIF: The Knowledge that Only Free Markets Disclose
by Sheldon Richman | May 26, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
As a follow-up to my recent article about F. A. Hayek's classic article "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945), I thought it worth extending Hayek's exploration of this area of social theory. In 1968 the Nobel laureate-economist delivered a lecture in German known...
TGIF: No One Has a Right to Make Immigration Policy
by Sheldon Richman | May 19, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says "no one has a right to immigrate" to the United States. "We determine as Americans," he says, "what type of immigration system benefits our country. When you're doing immigration, it's not for their benefit as foreigners. It's for your...
TGIF: Ducking Hayek
by Sheldon Richman | May 12, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
May 8 marked the 124th anniversary of the birth of F. A. Hayek, the 1974 Nobel-winning economist of the Austrian school. (He died in 1992.) That makes it a good time to acknowledge one of his many contributions, his epistemic case for the free and competitive market...
TGIF: Abolish Billionaires?
by Sheldon Richman | May 5, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to abolish billionaires. You read that right. He says he'd confiscate 100 percent of people's money above the $999 million mark -- as if that would cover a significant portion of the nearly $7 trillion the feds will spend in the next fiscal...
TGIF: Free Markets and the Pursuit of Happiness
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 28, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
For some time now I've thought that many people's antagonism to the market is motivated not by moral or economic objections but by aesthetic criteria. (I discuss this in What Social Animals Owe to Each Other and here.) By that I mean they simply find market relations...
TGIF: Politics Corrupts Money
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 21, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Money does not corrupt politics. Politics corrupts money. Politics as we know it is inherently corrupt; it's the way to select government officials, who then use the legalized threat of physical force, and force itself, to make peaceful people do or not do things...