We live in an nth-best society. It's neither fully libertarian (though libertarians disagree over exactly what that would mean) nor totalitarian like the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Maoist China, or North Korea. It's somewhere in between, closer to...
TGIF
TGIF: What Should I Do on Election Day?
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 23, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. --H. L. Mencken This column was prompted by a conversation I had with a few neighbors, whom I do not know, over the Nextdoor.com platform. I thank them for being...
TGIF: Trump Loves NATO
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 16, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Trump is either contentedly ignorant of the things he talks about or callously scornful of his adoring fans, whom he sees as rubes eager to swallow whatever he says. He could be both. Above all, Trump is a Trump supremacist. Does he believe in NATO or not? (Believe in...
TGIF: Tariffs Tax Consumers
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 9, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
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...
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...
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...
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...
TGIF: Smells like Genocide
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 12, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
If it looks like genocide, sounds like genocide, and smells like genocide, chances are it's genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will rule provisionally on whether that is what Israel is committing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The...