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The Free Market 16, no. 9 (September 1998)   Can government do a better job than private markets in any area of the economy? Consider: The tax-funded Human Genome Project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, has been the toast of the scientific elite for nearly a decade. It held out the promise of mapping of the entire structure of

The Free Market 16, no. 10 (October 1998)   In the midst of an economic boom, strange things were happening at General Motors. Huge swatches of its highly paid, coddled, unionized labor force were on strike. The result was catastrophic: GM plants all over North America shut down. In a free market, the management (serving at the behest of the

The Free Market 16, no. 11 (November 1998)   As the world financial system entered a state of collapse, commentators said that Russia had traded the shortages of socialism for the bank runs and financial panics of capitalism. In fact, modern finance and banking are built on unstable, socialistic foundations.   Central Banking . Earlier in this

The Free Market 16, no. 12 (December 1998)   Speaking before a Congressional committee, Alan Greenspan stepped back from his discussion of the newest international currency crisis to reflect on the gold standard of the last century. He noted that bad judgments and distortions in price had a way of working themselves out very quickly. Interest

The Free Market 17, no. 1 (January 1999)   The logic of the market is predicated on the pervasive and glorious inequality of man. No two people have the same scales of values, talents, or ambitions. It is this radical inequality, and the freedom to choose our own lot in life, that makes possible the division of labor and exchange. Through money

The Free Market 17, no. 2 (February 1999)   The policy agenda of the Clinton administration is usually described as halting, pragmatic, and poll driven. But in its approach to the issue of medical insurance and the drive to socialize medical care, it has been systematic, principled, and highly strategic. The Clinton government is using the

The Free Market 17, no. 3 (March 1999)   In this year of Millennium Lists (”Best Ten Songs of the Millennium,” etc.), the Wall Street Journal tried its hand at the ten economists--whom it called the “best and brightest”--who have “made a difference” in the last thousand years. Of course, the big problem in twentieth-century intellectual history is

The Free Market 17, no. 4 (April 1999)   The Y2K computer bug isn’t like a natural disaster or mass disease. It is a technical problem with a technical fix that can be overcome with work and time. However, and without speculating about the ultimate fallout from the problem, the bug has exposed a very real and deep infraction that has long plagued

The Free Market 17, no. 5 (May 1999)   No totalitarian state has tolerated even a modicum of financial privacy. That follows from the premise that citizens should not be granted any privacy at all. After all, they might use it in opposition to the government’s plans, or support themselves apart from the government. In contrast, freedom and

The Free Market 17, no. 6 (June 1999)   After the US government attacked Yugoslavia, the first act of the Republicans was to take tax cuts off the table (if they were ever really on it). This symbolic gesture underscores a point: when a war is on, the work of liberty is off. For this reason, everyone concerned about freedom must oppose war. At the