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...
POLITICS
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, Hamilton favored strong...
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 people to buy insurance,...
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 law against...
Put the Independence Back in Independence Day
Independence is the foundation of America. Independence is what should be celebrated on Independence Day.
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 solution. Bush's "moralistic"...
Health Care’s A Mess–So What’s the Solution?
They say health care in the United States is outrageously expensive because of a failure of the free market. But we don't have a free market in health care. States throughout the country regulate private health insurance, and have turned it into a one-size-fits-all...
Bill Gates Needs an Economic Course on Free-Markets
Dropping out of college didn't stop Bill Gates from making tons of money, but it kept him from classes where he might have learned about the beauty of spontaneous market processes. Never mind. I forgot that he attended Harvard. He might not have learned about markets...
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 natural. Man isn't part of the...
Catastrophic Global Warming and its Evil Twin ‘Climate Change’ Predictions Wrong on Both Counts
Global warming alarmists are a clever bunch. They have very carefully changed the issue from "global warming" to "climate change." Now any change in weather, be it mild winters or cool summers can be attributed to "climate change." Whatever the weather, the news is...
Socialized Medicine Is Wrong For Colorado
The Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform recently selected four proposals for health care reform for eventual consideration by the state legislature. Although they differ in their details, these differences are dwarfed by their fundamental similarity...
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 schooling (e.g., City Hall...
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, who...
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 ignorance about...
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 driving up gasoline...
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 the price...
Fighting Climate Change, Gun Control and Income Tax Laws
Last week, Japan pledged $100 million in grants to fight global climate change. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the world's major leader in the struggle against climate change. The World Conservation Union has recently recognized the work...
The Tax-Cut Myth
The federal government keeps growing, as I pointed out last week, but the Bush administration has cut tax rates a few times since 2001. How can that be? The answer is simple: deficit spending. Some Republicans argue that deficits don't matter; that if you cut taxes,...
The Public Trough Is Bigger Than Ever
Bill Clinton once declared, "The era of big government is over." Both Republicans and Democrats applauded. What a joke. Government grew under Clinton, and grew even faster under his successor. Government is so big today that more than half the population gets a major...
The Temperamental Minimum Wage
The first fundamental law of demand postulates that the lower the price of something, the more will be demanded, and the higher the price, the less will be demanded. To my knowledge, there are no known exceptions to the law of demand. That was until last fall when 650...
Crass and Class at George Mason University
The lecture by Dr. John Lewis last month on Islamic totalitarianism at George Mason University was one of the most surreal public experiences I have witnessed in all my years as an activist and advocate. It evidenced in no uncertain terms that rationality and common...
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