The president’s actions might capture media attention and create the impression that he is going to bat to protect threatened jobs, but the visible effects of such random blundering about will be tiny in comparison with the far-reaching effects on corporate managers and owners across the board, because such selective intervention in the details of companies’ operations epitomizes the kind of action by which governments create what I have called regime uncertainty—a pervasive fear that existing private property rights in one’s property and the income the property yields will be attenuated or destroyed by unpredictable changes in government taxation, regulation, or other action.
Category: Against Leviathan
Ideology, Identity Politics, and Politico-Cultural Conflict
The past year’s political events, especially the campaign for the presidency as it converged on a contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have illuminated the way in which ideology, with the identity politics that springs from it, drives a dialectical process: political domination creates resentment, which feeds reaction and, on occasion, revolution against a previously entrenched ruling class and its belief system.
Political and Governmental Corruption Is a Feature, Not a Bug
People do not oppose corruption in politics and government. They oppose only the corruption that does not steer loot and social domination to them. After all, the entire process of so-called democratic government is nothing but corruption writ large and backed by the threat of violent force.
The Never-Ending Contest in Politico-Economic Life
Written by Robert Higgs. A contest is under way in the world between the forces of creation, improvement, and progress and the forces of destruction, spoliation, and retrogression. This contest has been going on for thousands of years, and except during brief interludes the negative forces always kept the positive forces firmly in check. Roughly…
Whether You Know It or Not, You Are a Tax Slave
In the antebellum South, it was not uncommon for slaves to rent themselves from their masters. As a young man, Frederick Douglass did so, for example. His owner gave him leave to go out on his own, to find employment where he could, and to pocket the pay he received for such work, except that each month he had to pay his master a fixed sum for his freedom.
Why the Precautionary Principle Counsels Us to Renounce Statism
Editor’s Pick. Written by Robert Higgs. Propose that the state be replaced by genuine self-government and immediately people come forth with a litany of objections—anarchy is a pipe dream; it is untried; it would never work; is fails to solve problem R and problem S; and so forth. So the objectors, however much they may…
State Power and How It Might Be Undermined
Editor’s Pick. Written by Robert Higgs. State power is the most dangerous force in modern life. State rulers, seeking their own aggrandizement and enrichment, employ this power systematically to plunder and abuse their subjects. Of course, they cannot act in this way without the assistance of many others, among whom some assist willingly, some in…
Classical Liberalism’s Impossible Dream
Editor’s Pick. Written by Robert Higgs. I can understand why someone might embrace classical liberalism. I did so myself more than forty years ago. People become classical liberals for two main reasons, which are interrelated: first, because they come to understand that free markets “work” better than government-controlled economic systems in providing prosperity and domestic…
The Power of the State versus the Power of Love
Editor’s Pick. Written by Robert Higgs. Hardheaded people mock the idea that “love is the answer” to the people’s dire situation. They insist that evil forces and evil men are afoot in the world, men who care nothing for love and seek only vile ends, and that such malevolence can be fended off effectively only…
Nationalism, the Bane of the Modern Age
Editor’s Pick. Written by Robert Higgs. Everyone, it seems, has a hollow space in his makeup. Perhaps he has no faith, no hope, no charity; no sense that he is basically a lord or a priest or a peasant; no comfort in knowing his personal latitude and longitude in the great scheme of things; no…