We seem to forget that a tariff is a tax. It is formally levied on importers, not on foreigners or things, but since it can usually be passed along, it ends up as an indirect tax on consumers. The point of tariffs is to protect certain domestic businesses and their...
Libertarianism
Libertarianism Is a Rejection of Identity Politics
by Josh Tullis | Feb 6, 2024 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
Politics often places people into oversimplified groups based on singular traits, attributes, or beliefs. People are rarely this one dimensional, so why is it so pervasive? It's useful for politicians to separate people into different groups to consolidate power. A...
TGIF: Autocracy — Boo! Democracy — Hiss!
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 2, 2024 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Here's why democracy is a dubious idea. Government decisions are high stakes. It decides matters of war and peace, prosperity and poverty, freedom or oppression. Yet we let incompetent people steer the ship of state. Most voters are ignorant and process what little...
Murray Rothbard’s ‘War Guilt in the Middle East,’ Spanish Translation
by Murray N. Rothbard | Jan 31, 2024 | Blog, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism
Editor's Note: This Murray Rothbard article was originally featured in the Spring-Autumn 1967 issue of Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, and is republished with permission of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Credit for the translation belongs to Mamela...
TGIF: Without the State, Who’d Drag Us into Other People’s Wars?
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 26, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
This article was posted shortly before the International Court of Justice ruled provisionally that Israel's Gaza military operation can plausibly be described as acts outlawed by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The ICJ...
Libertarianism: Manual to Humanity
by Hunter DeRensis | Jan 22, 2024 | Blog, Libertarianism
Brian Gray has an essay, originally featured at the 2019 Libertarian Scholars Conference, making the case for libertarianism's non-aggression principle and the concept of an objective, universal morality at his blog Anarcholife.
The World Doesn’t Owe You a Thing
by Tom Woods | Jan 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
A huge drawback to social media is this: I'm not sure I really want everybody's opinions on every last thing, and it's frankly demoralizing to realize just how far gone so many people are. For example, one of my own Twitter followers wrote this: "The idea of having to...
TGIF: Milei at Davos
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 19, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Javier Milei, the newly elected president of Argentina, spoke the other day at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is essentially a group of people who want world affairs centrally planned by political authorities. They are...