September
2023

August
2023

July
2023

June
2023

September 2023

Article

The Partisan Parting of TV News

By Richard B. McKenzie

Walter Cronkite Fox News commentary host Tucker Carlson and CNN news anchor Don Lemon—both highly paid network stars for their audience ratings—were summarily fired during the same week in April 2023 for undisclosed reasons. Regardless of their professional and/o...

Book Review

Interpreting Social and Economic Evolution

By Rosolino Candela

A Liberty Classics Book Review of Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution, by Ludwig von Mises. 1 How is social cooperation possible without command? The answer to this question requires that we have a conceptual framework (i.e....

Book Review

The Revanchist Right

By Arnold Kling

... despite spending billions of dollars supporting its infrastructure, and publishing untold thousands of white papers, the establishment Right has registered no clear gains and many clear losses. Much of the nation was conquered on its watch. ... In terms o...

Article

Neoliberalism on Trial: Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risk

By Walter Donway

Rather than breaking capitalism... A.G.I... is more likely to create a powerful... ally for capitalism's most destructive creed: neoliberalism. —Evgeny Morozov. The New York Times1 The New York Times for decades has been America's bellwether of coming po...

August 2023

Article

Don Lavoie on the Continuing Relevance of the Knowledge Problem

By Cory Massimino

It was Don Lavoie, not Friedrich Hayek, who coined the term "knowledge problem" in his seminal 1985 National Economic Planning: What Is Left?1 (itself a more accessible and policy-focused distillation of Lavoie's thesis, under Israel Kirzner, entitled Rivalry and Centra...

Article

Adam Smith: Experimental Innovator

By Walter Castro and Julio Elias

Image of Adam Smith in the style of Cezanne. Generated by DALL-E OpenAI software, based on public domain material. Many scholars, especially from other disciplines, have voiced concerns regarding a simplified interpretation of Adam Smith's ideas in modern economi...

Article

Climate Activism versus Classical Liberalism at 35

By Robert L. Bradley

Thirty-five years ago—on June 24, 1988—the front page of the New York Times had a three-column announcement from the nation's capital: "Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate."1 This "guns of August" proclamation invoked a military metaphor: "Sharp Cut in Bur...

Book Review

Thomas Sowell, Political Conflict, and Madmen in Authority

By Arnold Kling

The role of rationally articulated ideas may be quite modest in its effect on a given election, a legislative vote, or an action of a head of state. Yet the atmosphere in which such decisions take place may be dominated by a particular vision—or by a particular co...

July 2023

Book Review

The Kids Are… Different

By Arnold Kling

Along with the direct impacts of technology, individualism and a slower life trajectory are the key trends that define the generations of the 20th and 21st centuries. ——Jean M. Twenge, Generations,1 p. 8 Jean Twenge has assembled a wealth of informatio...

Article

Mises and Buchanan on Classical Liberalism versus Socialism

By Alejandra Salinas

Ludwig von Mises The works of Ludwig von Mises and James M. Buchanan reflect the best of the classical liberal intellectual tradition. Given the centenary of the publication of Mises' Socialism,1 and since 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of Bucha...

Article

A Child Comes With His Own Bread

By Rosolino Candela

Since at least the publication of Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb in 1968,1 the narrative that has gripped both academicians and the popular audience has been one of a world that is overpopulated. In a more recent article published in Scientific American, entitled "E...

Article

The Boundaries of Fiscal and Monetary Policy

By Leonidas Zelmanovitz

The members of the Philadelphia Convention1 had a few fundamental purposes they hoped to achieve with the Constitution they created. Some of their ideas were new at the time and some were time-tested. Others were not even stated and just adopted as commonsensical, since...

June 2023

Article

Socialism Is as Socialism Does

By Adam Martin

Some concepts in political economy operate like a Rorschach test. When someone defines them, you often learn more about them than about the concept. Democracy, fascism, capitalism, liberalism, conservatism, neo-anything, and socialism often mean different things to ...

Article

A Wealth Tax Reality Check

By Richard B. McKenzie

At every opportunity, President Joe Biden has pressed a central tenet of his social agenda: "Extremely wealthy Americans don't pay their fair share of federal income taxes" (emphasis added). By Internal Revenue Service definitions of income, top income earners generally...

Article

Why Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better: A Swiftian Perspective

By Richard Gunderman

Jonathan Swift Healthcare in the United States is in the midst of a massive wave of consolidation. For example, fifty years ago, virtually all non-academic, non-government U.S. physicians had an ownership interest in their practices. Today, approximately 70% of U.S. ...

Book Review

In Search of Stable Money

By Arnold Kling

Under a gold standard, government bonds are nearly free of inflation risk but not of default risk. Under a fiat standard, the reverse is true. ——White, Lawrence H. Better Money: Gold Fiat or Bitcoin? (pp. 214-215).1 In his new book, Lawrence H. White c...