If you want to understand what is happening to Microsoft, read "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand's classic story of the bureaucratic assault on the entrepreneurial spirit. In "Atlas Shrugged," Hank Rearden, inventor of the fabulous Rearden metal, is harassed and blackmailed...
POLITICS
Where is the Future?
Where are the flying cars?It is now 2001, and for those of us who insist on technicalities, this is the real, official beginning of the 21st century. So I want to know: Where is the future predicted for us by science fiction writers -- you know, the future of flying...
Microsoft and Liberty
Think about the government's case against Microsoft and, just as importantly, it's implications for our liberty. Let's ask a general question just to get started. If there's an act we all agree is immoral and unacceptable when done by an individual, does that act...
The End of Montgomery Ward
The passing of a once-great business is often a time for nostalgia and regret, so the announced closing down of Montgomery Ward has provoked much media comment along these lines. But both the rise and the fall of Montgomery Ward illustrates the dynamic adjustments of...
Global Economic Freedom Continues to Gain Survey Shows
More countries expanded economic freedom during the past year than curtailed it, The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal report in their annual "Index of Economic Freedom." The survey showed 70 of the 155 countries rated granted their citizens more...
U.S Should Not Use Trade Agreement to Hold Chile Hostage
On November 29, the United States and Chile came one step closer to achieving (in the words of President Bill Clinton) a "mutual commitment to advancing free and open trade and investment in the Americas." Chile received this long-sought invitation to trade more...
Ignoring A “Hate Crime” in D.C.
Here in the land of pontificators and tolerance preachers, a hateful crime goes unpunished. President Clinton, our lame duck lip-biter, is nowhere to be found. Neither are the chest-beaters at the New York Times. And the rainbow coalition of loud-mouthed minority...
Feminization of Gun Debate Drowns Out Sober Analysis
WHEN IT COMES to talking about guns, responsible women should adopt Johnson & Johnson's Baby Shampoo pledge: No more tears. No more mom-in-tennis-shoes proselytizing. No more irrational NRA-bashing. No more maudlin sermons. Alas, the sopping feminization of...
Listen to Venus Williams Advice on Taxes
Basically, the tax system is designed to punish success. Work harder than the next guy, innovate, invest wisely, or get lucky--and the government will put the squeeze on you. Almost every argument made by liberals against tax cuts, it seems, comes down to a familiar...
Tax Competition: Harmful to Whom?
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based institution with 29 member nations from the industrialized world, has launched a project seeking the elimination of "harmful tax competition."In a report titled "Towards Global Tax...
The OECD Vision: One Big International Welfare State with High Taxes Across the Globe
The Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) is comprised of 29 industrial nations, mostly in Western Europe, the Pacific Rim and North America. They've recently released a report titled "Towards Global Tax Cooperation" that should worry all of...
The Ghost of America’s Health Care Future Lives in Canada Today
Imagine a world in which you're forbidden to spend your own money to obtain medical care. Imagine that, regardless of your personal needs, you're forced to rely on the government for health care, no matter how long it takes or how substandard it may be. A far-fetched...
How the Greenspan Stole Christmas
A cloud is hanging over this year's Christmas season: the cloud of recession. You can see it in weak Christmas shopping sales and the desperate deals being offered by car makers. You can see it in the words of a shopper interviewed on television, who explained her...
Who are the “Wealthiest One Percent of Taxpayers”?
So who are these cads, this "wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers," anyway? We heard a lot about this select group of villains in the presidential debates. Indeed, certain politicians almost seem to hold their noses, their voices dripping with disdain, as they deplore...
The Counter-Money Laundering Act is an Attack on Privacy and Liberty to Help Prop Up Welfare State Regimes
Congress has renewed its efforts to combat international money laundering this past August. In the House of Representatives, Representative Jim Leach (R-IA) has introduced H.R. 3886, the International Counter-Money Laundering Act, which has moved swiftly through the...
The Medicare Bureaucracy is a Frankenstein Monster That is Destroying American Medicine
The complex system for Medicare reimbursement for physicians is based on over 7,000 medical treatment codes. You know we're in big trouble in medicine today when there's a code not only for flatulence, but one for the guy standing downwind as well.I'm not making this...
How Washington Should Respond to Instability in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, a member of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, has led his country to the brink of implosion. His policies flout freedom and the rule of law and have ruined a once-healthy economy. Washington should urge Mugabe to...
How the Left Lives On The Backs of the Poor
The privations and sufferings of the poor have long been central themes in the vision of the political left. That is what attracted many of us to the left in our youth. But the actual consequences of the agenda of the left on the poor -- and on others -- is what...
Alice in Florida
Even those of us who have been complaining for years about the bias and shallowness of the media should admit that we never expected the media to be quite so grossly biased or so unbelievably shallow as they have been about the outcome of the recent presidential...
Spontaneity versus Whim Worship
What's the fundamental difference between being a whim worshiper and being spontaneous? A whim worshipper acts on whatever urges move him, at the moment they first move him. He does not stop and use reason to evaluate what he's doing. A spontaneous person is capable...
Tax Cuts: Now More Than Ever
President-elect George W. Bush is being advised by his political foes to abandon tax cuts. This step, they tell him, is the only way to heal the wounds caused by weeks of legal wrangling and partisan rhetoric. Yet abandoning tax cuts would be a big mistake, both...
Jackson, Sharpton, and Gore Play Racial Rope-A-Dope
Democrats have no constituency more loyal than black Americans. Much of that loyalty is delivered by black elected officials, civil-rights organizations and church leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. During the last election, these people did a yeoman's job...
The Drive Against Responsibility Supports Psychology without a Mind
It used to be a raging debate in psychology: Are human beings primarily determined by physiology -- or by other factors such as environment, family, thinking habits, etc.? Today, such a debate is nearly non-existent. Instead of looking for the role of...
Mr. Putin Goes to Havana
This past week, Russian president Vladimir Putin visited communist Cuba on a diplomatic visit to that tropical paradise, that CNN commentators love to gush about, Cuba. [Now if only CNN would only move there permanently!]Many have questioned the purpose of the trip,...
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