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The Free Market 13, no. 11 (November 1995)   American money was never more sound, or banking more free, than 200 years ago. Since then, it’s been a long, steady decline from the gold standard and competitive banking to our Fed-run system of inflated paper currency, deposit insurance, and perpetually shaky banks on the dole. The dreadful

The Free Market 6, no. 6 (June 1988)   In the 18th century, as he had for millennia, the urban peddler went from door to door with a sack on his back. When we see this antique method of economic organization, not in a museum setting at Colonial Williamsburg but daily on the streets of every city and town in America, we know the government is in

The Free Market 6, no. 8 (August 1988)   In primitive societies, witchdoctors legitimized tyrannical government by naming it the mandate of heaven. In return, they got a cut of the earthly loot. In the U.S., some economists serve the same function. For promoting government intervention as scientific, and advising on the most efficient forms, they

The Free Market 7, no. 2 (February 1989)   A roar, a shudder, and the end of the world. That was Soviet Armenia on December 7th when the great earthquake struck. Whole cities disappeared, as nurseries and factories, offices and homes, collapsed into rubble. In a few moments, more than 55,000 men, women, and children were crushed to death. But no

The Free Market 7, no. 5 (May 1989)   Any business owner whose employees deliberately set out to harass and even endanger customers could do only one thing: fire the offenders, and maybe sue them for damages as well. Nothing else would be compatible with free-enterprise and private property. But thanks to a whole host of government interventions,

The Free Market 7, no. 6 (June 1989)   The broadly held corporation was one of the most important developments of the 19th century. The capital of thou­sands and then millions of stockholders made possible the profitable development of large firms, which enriched not only their owners, but society as a whole. The railroads were the first to

The Free Market 5, no. 8 (August 1987)   To most Americans, economists don’t leap instantly to mind as treasures, let alone national treasures. Whether making arrogant and fallacious mathematical predictions; filling the minds of college students with Keynesian and socialist buncombe; or giving a theoretical cover to State inflation, taxation,

The Free Market 6, no. 4 (April 1988)   The Federal Reserve—the U. S. government’s central bank—was schemed at a secret meeting in 1910 at J. P. Morgan’s hunting club on Jekyll Island, Georgia. The participants—who claimed, as they boarded a private railroad car in Hoboken, New Jersey to be going on a hunting trip—were: Senator Nelson W. Aldrich

This interview was originally published by the Rutherford Institute. John W. Whitehead : There is no end to discussion of John Locke’s impact on the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence lists our inalienable rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and the

Lew Rockwell discusses the life and works of Murray Rothbard with Tom Woods . Tom Woods : In two minutes or less, why is Rothbard important to begin with? Lew Rockwell : Well, Rothbard is important for a couple of reasons. First of all, because he was such a significant scholar — as an economist, as an historian, as a political philosopher. He was