During the 2008 credit crisis, a horde of central bankers, Treasury officials and large corporations screamed that the end of the world was upon us — unless trillions of your money were spent (or created) to prop up the existing financial and banking systems. The presumption was that the existing structure must never be changed, […]
Laissez-Faire Today
The Bizarre World of Plastic Fees
Most everyone is really down on financial companies these days. What kind of scam are they running, anyway? It seems as if everywhere we turn, there are fees, fees, fees. Because most everyone has some kind of credit or debit card, the popular mind is particularly focused on them, expecting to find signs of exploitation […]
Despair and the State
The sad and tragic story of Andrew Wordes — the chicken farmer who was driven to despair by government harassment and killed himself last month — continues to haunt me. And it turns out to be just one of millions of cases of similar psychological torment caused by government, directly and indirectly. These are wholly […]
How Regulators Wrecked Our Mowers
When I was a kid, lawn mowers worked. You pushed them and they cut grass. The grass went into the bag. Then you emptied the bag. The results were great. There was no grass to rake. It all went into the bag, because that’s what lawn mowers did. Then the feds got involved. Or so […]
Regulators Take on the E-Book
Get this: The federal bureaucrat who last month started the litigation against Apple and book publishers for e-book pricing is the same person who, back in the stone age, represented Netscape in its lawsuit against Microsoft. Recall that Microsoft was trying to give away its Internet Explorer to computer users for free. Netscape went nuts […]
The Good News (for Animals) on Health Care
There’s so much bad news about health care these days. Maybe it’s time for some good news. One sector, technology, is advancing at a pace never seen before. Customers have a range of services to choose from, and price competition is very intense. The doctor sees you whether you have insurance or not. Customers mostly […]
A Tool of Human Liberation
Of all social media on the Internet, LinkedIn is the least splashy. A movie will never be made about this tool. It has introduced no new words into our vernacular. The teen crowd doesn’t download the app. But if you measure these technologies and Web tools by the positive ways they have changed lives, LinkedIn […]
Commerce, Our Benefactor
What if we had the following economic system? This system would shower the globe with free goods day and night, asking nothing and giving nearly everything. Most of what it generated would be free goods, and every living person would have access. Anyone who amassed a private profit would do so only because he or […]
Iran and the Recurring Bad Dream
Maybe U.S. energy independence isn’t such a great thing after all. Some years ago, when the American political class was whooping it up for war with China, what stopped the push were the American commercial interests who essentially asked, “What, are you crazy? This is bad for business. We need China, and China needs us. […]
Should We Worry about the Class Divide?
Charles Murray’s new book Coming Apart has generated an incredible amount of handwringing on all sides. For those who are skilled at ignoring such debates — good impulse, I say! — his thesis is that the ebb and flow of wealth and status between classes that once characterized American culture has ended. He marshals vast […]