Cops committing sexual assault and battery of passengers at every airport; cops drawing people’s blood without consent; cops searching people’s body cavities without consent; cops searching people’s cars and homes without consent…
Author: Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.
A Plea for Do-Nothing Government
Probably the single most beneficial amendment to the U.S. and state constitutions would be an amendment to forbid the government from “doing something” beyond its normal actions in response to national or local emergencies.
Principal-Agent Theory and Representative Government
As a rule, the candidates for election to public office make vague promises, hardly any of which are subject to straightforward monitoring or quantitative measurement. In general, it is impossible for principals in the electorate to identify precisely how their office-holding agents have succeeded or failed.
Who Will Crush Others
Americans and many others hold, in the greatest esteem, something they call democracy. But this type of government is not democracy—direct rule by “the people”—but representative republicanism, wherein people’s “representatives” make decisions that are binding (i.e., enforced by violence and threats of violence) on everyone.
“The Law is The Law”
Many people claim to have nothing against immigrants to the USA, yet they zealously oppose all illegal immigration. The law is the law, they say, and everyone should obey it.
The State Thrives on Ignorance
The state needs the general public to be ignorant, but it doesn’t simply stand aside hoping that people left to their own devices will end up that way.
Does Everyone Want to Live in a Free Society?
People who give the highest priority to living in a free society do not make the same mistake year after year after year for more than a century. Except for a tiny minority, avowals of the love of liberty are little more than hot air. Given a choice, people choose something else.
Repercussions as a Matter of Course
Government can hardly ever do just one thing. Its action has repercussions, and these repercussions have repercussions, and so forth. Even when the government’s initial action may seem compassionate or productive, it is highly unlike that the repercussions will prove likewise.
Distinct Politico-Economic Systems
Some people feel an irresistible urge to lecture others on how every ideological group or movement that is not pure capitalism is simply socialism. Hence they rush to insist that, for example, the Nazis were just national socialists, whereas the Bolsheviks were international socialists, and therefore both were just socialists, which is the important aspect of the matter.
Bankrupt from The Get-Go
In regard to the popular (especially in academia) ideology that the truth of a proposition is solely a matter of the race, sex, class, and gender of the person stating the proposition, do the proponents of this view suppose that every member of such an aggregate (e.g., every black person, every gay person, etc.) holds identical beliefs?