The debate over the freedom to discriminate has flared up again in Indiana where the conflict is being framed as a dispute between Christians and gays. In truth, the matter hinges only on whether or not people should be allowed to exercise private property rights.
The Fed and Washington politicians tell us how well the economy is doing, but the problems of the last financial crisis remain, and if we look closer, we find stagnant wages, ageing equipment, and lenders looking to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
Throughout most of history, “citizens belonged to the city, body and soul,” writes Larry Siedentop in his new book Inventing the Individual. Even today, the Western idea of the free individual remains largely confined to the West.
Once a recession sets in, markets can only repair themselves if prices — including wages — are allowed to fall where necessary. The resulting increases in real interest rates are the key to spurring new economic activity.
The opponents of technological innovation in free markets have been with us for a long time. A century ago, Gustave de Molinari was defending the automobile from the technology haters of his day. Little has changed since then.
The Middle East once enjoyed unprecedented economic prosperity, but thanks to centuries of bureaucratic centralization and institutional barriers to free-market growth, the modern Middle East has long since fallen behind the West.
Natural rights are fundamentally different from goods and services. Judge Napolitano explains in his new book how the acquisition of a mere service — security — cannot be based on the destruction of rights, which cannot be traded away.
If all work and all workers were homogenous, we might be able to say that the gender wage gap is caused by sexism, but the gap is better explained by big differences in the life goals and chosen industries of men and women.
