FDA: Friend or Foe?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with ensuring that only safe and effective drugs are marketed. Such a task is highly complex and fraught with difficulties. Consumers, the ostensible beneficiaries, should examine and question the incentive...

The Writing Process: One Step at a Time

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or NAEP), the average high school student is an incompetent writer. To evaluate their writing ability, testers asked high school juniors to write a paragraph based on notes they were given about a haunted...

The Failure of Field Trips, Part 2

In my recent article “The Failure of Field Trips,” I explained what is wrong with traditional school outings. The typical field trip is irrelevant to the students’ education, either because they have been unprepared to appreciate it by their...

Creating Effective Incentives

What should our response be if terrorists set off a nuclear explosion, or some other weapon of mass destruction, in one of our cities? I put this question to Professor Victor Hanson, senior research fellow at Stanford University’s prestigious Hoover Institution,...

The Double “Thank-You” Moment

Some people hate me because I defend free markets. Once someone accosted me on a New York City street and said, “I hope you die soon.” Why the hostility to commerce? What could be more benign than the freedom to trade with whomever you wish? I suspect...

Who Is Gouging Whom?

Last Wednesday the House of Representatives passed legislation instituting penalties of up to $150 million for companies and up to $2 million and 10 years’ imprisonment for individuals found guilty of gasoline “price gouging.” But the real gouger...

What to Do About Rising Gas Prices

With gasoline prices at their highest point in recent years, the knee-jerk response of many is to call for the government to “do something” to force prices lower. But no matter what the price of gasoline is, such calls are wrong. All market fluctuations in...