Do People Care?

Back in the late 1960s, during graduate study at UCLA, I had a casual conversation with Professor Armen Alchian, one of my tenacious mentors. Professor Alchian is among the top 20th-century contributors to economic knowledge. During our graduate student/faculty coffee...

Bad Government Conservatives

“Reviving the Hamilton Agenda.” That’s the headline the New York Times gave David Brooks’s recent column honoring Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father perhaps least interested in limiting political power. Unlike his rival Thomas Jefferson,...

Why Health Insurance Should Not Be Universal

Should the federal government require everyone to buy health insurance? If the goal is “universal coverage,” then obviously the answer is yes. But that isn’t the point. The point is that it isn’t the duty or right of the government to force...

The Law Versus Orders

Suppose a person is raped and we arrest the rapist. Should his status, whether he’s a senator, professor or an ordinary man, play a role in the adjudication of the crime and subsequent punishment? I’m betting that the average person would answer that the...

All Power to the Post Office

The U.S. government now pays for and controls half of the health care in America. That is up from less than 10 percent forty years ago. Government spending on health care has increased at a rapid rate as its share of health care has increased. Yet those who complain...

How to Stop Iran?

Bush’s disastrous foreign policy–especially the Iraq fiasco–has led many to conclude that diplomatic “engagement” is our best hope for stopping Iran’s nuclear program. But while Bush’s policy is a failure, engagement is not...

The Sad Case of the Spotted Owl

Environmentalists are quick to lecture the rest of us about the ways of nature. Don’t clean the dead trees off the forest floor, it’s natural. Cattle and horses on the range aren’t native, so let the grizzles and wolves devour them, it’s...