Dick Clark

President Barack Obama signed the Agricultural Act of 2014 into law on February 7, 2014. The legislation becomes law later than anticipated given the usual timing for farm bills, which typically work...

This term “democratic” gets tossed around a lot, usually in a positive, “power to the people rather than some arbitrary ruler” sense. By that meaning, Wikipedia is indeed democratic. Yet, unlike a...

The man credited with founding Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales — known to Wikipedians as “Jimbo” — was a finance major at Auburn University when the Mises Institute’s Mark Thornton suggested he read “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” a now-famous essay written by Austro-libertarian economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek. The essay argues that prices in the market represent a spontaneous order that results from the interaction of individuals with diverse wants, allowing them to cooperate to achieve complex goals. According to a June 2007 Reason magazine interview, this insight of Hayek’s is what led Wales to found Wikipedia. The rather lofty vision that inspired Wales? “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”