Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. – AYN RAND
"There is no capitalism without conscience. There is no wealth without character," President Bush told Wall Street yesterday. True. But if business owners are not smart enough to see that it's in their own economic self-interest to be honest with their employees and...
While Senator Barbara Boxer is trying to get the federal government to declare more than two million acres in California off-limits to development, California's other Senator, Diane Feinstein, has already brokered a deal that takes 16,500 acres off-limits. That's...
When Hawaii recently passed a law controlling how high the price of gasoline can go in that state, it was the first law controlling the price of gasoline since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan ended federal control over oil prices. What was unusual about the...
When future policymakers want to understand the law and economics surrounding one of the most watched antitrust cases in history, they will look to "Microsoft, Antitrust and the New Economy," a recent compilation of essays published by the Milken Institute. The book's...
Politics, according to an old adage, is "the art of the possible." But, during election years especially, politics has increasingly become the art of the impossible. What politicians promise to all the various groups adds up to more than anyone can possibly deliver....
Despite the fanfare of a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington, a very old and hackneyed set of proposals was unveiled as a "new vision" for the creation of "affordable housing." The speech was by Richard Ravitch, co-chairman with former...
A divided Iowa Supreme Court last week reinstated a class action lawsuit against Microsoft brought by Joe Comes on behalf of himself and his fellow Iowans who purchased computers that came pre-installed with Windows 98. As end-user licensees of the operating system,...
Most politicians and economists do not recognize capitalism's crucial characteristic. Given the state of the world today it's easy to see why. In his widely acclaimed speech of September 20, 2001, President Bush said, "Terrorists attacked a symbol of American...
The State of California, like every other state in the Union, has created a legal monopoly within the medical profession that is restricted to only those individuals who are licensed by the states to practice medicine within their jurisdictions.
Many Objectivists read the book American Steel about Ken Iverson's amazing corporate leadership in developing new technology for steel producers when Big Steel was floundering under old ideas and crippling unions. Dr. Edwin Locke also made many mentions of him, as...
In The New York Times of October 11th , right next to the article on the latest Nobel Prize winners in economics, is another titled Expansive Role for Greenspan Brings Out Critics of Fed's Chief. The article recounts how Alan Greenspan has been called upon (and has...
The economic and foreign policies of governments -- for good or ill -- exert a dramatic influence on investors' portfolios. If that isn't obvious by now, given the policies of the past two years, it will never be so. In economic policy we've seen Fed rate hikes...
The following written testimony was submitted to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary for its hearings on the proposed Microsoft antitrust settlement. On behalf of the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism, I respectfully submit my testimony to the US Senate...
An unregulated free market provides the environment in which auditors who differentiate on a reputation for quality and useful disclosures could add value to their business, and their customers’.
Nearly half a century ago the popular economist John Maynard Keynes wrote, "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are...
Over the past couple of years, events like the Internet and more recently, the Enron and Global Crossing debacles, have spurred people to reconsider the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, "EMH." For those unfamiliar with EMH, here's a brief textbook definition: prices of...
We are all familiar with pundits from all corners decrying our dependence on foreign oil. Before the oil embargo in the 70's and subsequent attempts to wean ourselves from OPEC, we were importing about 25% of our oil and now we are importing over 50%. This is always...
Too many people who talk about a lack of "affordable housing" seem to think that this is something the government must build or subsidize. It never seems to occur to them that government activity is itself one of the biggest reasons for housing being unaffordable. Nor...
A RECENTLY published housing study says: "San Francisco is one of the densest large cities in the U.S." That is true in both senses of the word "dense." Nowhere are San Franciscans more dense than when talking about housing -- especially that perennial will o' the...
Is deficit spending "a potent recession cure when administered properly"? A newspaper business writer made this assertion in an article entitled "The Budget Deficit Faced by Many States." But is it true, that it's a good thing when governments spend more than they...
Instead of straightening out its business problems, AOL has decided to spend its time and effort filing lawsuits against tough competitors – a petty, distracting pursuit that won’t help AOL or, for that matter, the U.S. economy, which depends on firms like Microsoft for the innovation necessary to bring about a technology revival.
For over four years, CMDC and its supporters have been outspoken advocates against antitrust and the current antitrust case against Microsoft. Before us today is the last chance to tell the government regulators that Microsoft should be lauded, instead of punished for...
Other than being rich and famous, what do David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Sam Donaldson and Scottie Pippen have in common? They all feed at the public trough. More precisely, they collect subsidies from the federal farm program, as do at least 14 members of Congress....
How badly flawed are the concepts of freedom of entry, monopoly, and competition that underlie the theory and practice of antitrust.
To know what economics is, we must first know what an economy is. Perhaps most of us think of an economy as a system for the production and distribution of the goods and services we use in everyday life. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough....
Reporting their findings in the February 2001 Applied Economics Letters -- a British professional journal -- Professors Franklin G. Mixon Jr. and Kamal P. Upadhyaya rank economics departments in the U.S. South. The rankings are based upon faculty research...
The settlement of the Microsoft anti-trust case got interesting this week -- and developments revealed the laughably absurd nature of much of the suit against the company. Reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere revealed that Mister...
National emergencies are notorious for giving free reign to bad economics. In the panic of a crisis, people grasp desperately for solutions. And thanks to generations of bad economics education, they are offered a wide range of economic errors to grasp at. The most...
Even the Department of Energy's study found that price caps -- which, let's not forget, are what got California into this mess in the first place -- won't improve the energy situation. In fact, they'll likely make it worse. The study concluded that a $150 "hard cap"...
Among the suggestions being made for getting the American economy moving up again is a reduction in the capital gains tax. But any such suggestion makes people on the left go ballistic. It is "trickle down" economics, they cry. Liberals claim that those who favor tax...
First the good news: The new administration's officials in the Department of Justice have decided not to murder the Microsoft Corporation and carve up its corpse. Now the bad news: They have chosen the more humane option of slow torture. The Justice Department's new...
To know what economics is, we must first know what an economy is. Perhaps most of us think of an economy as a system for the production and distribution of the goods and services we use in everyday life. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough....
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