Editor’s Pick. Written by Robert Higgs. As a rule, libertarians incline toward wishful thinking. They constantly pluck little events, statements, and movies from the flow of life and cry out, “Eureka! Libertarianism is on the march!” With some of my friends, this tendency is so marked that I have become amused by its recurrent expression—well,…
Category: Editor’s Picks
Hierarchy or the Market
Editor’s Pick. Written by Kevin Carson. In an article in last June’s Freeman (2007), I applied some ideas from the socialist-calculation debate to the private corporation and examined the extent to which it is an island of calculational chaos in the market economy. I’d like to expand that line of analysis now and apply some common…
How to Save Endangered Species
Editor’s Pick. Video by 60 Minutes, CBS News.
Why I’m Teaching My Son To Break the Law
Editor’s Pick. Written by J.D. Tuccille. In 1858, hundreds of residents of Oberlin and Wellington, Ohio—many of them students and faculty at Oberlin College—surrounded Wadsworth’s Hotel, in Wellington, in which law enforcement officers and slavehunters held a fugitive slave named John Price, under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act. After a brief standoff, the…
The Challenging, Radical Anti-Statism of the Ancient Israelites
Editor’s Pick. Written by Kevin Vallier. I’ve recently finished reading the great political theorist Michael Walzer’s book In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible. Walzer’s thesis is that the Biblical writers were “not very interested in politics” in contrast to the ancient Greeks. In fact, “there is a strong anti-political tendency in the biblical…
Render unto Caesar… Nothing
Editor’s Pick. Written by Darryl Perry. Yeshua did not say that taxes are lawful, nor did he counsel obedience to the Romans. In the context of a society with many competing currencies, most of which did not have Caesar’s inscription, Yushua’s response is subtly seditious. Even if one rejects the idea that all things belong…
The Whole Problem (and Solution) in Two Minutes
Editor’s Pick. Video by Larkin Rose.
The State: Crown Jewel of Human Social Organization
Editor’s Pick. Written by Robert Higgs. Since the earliest stage of human history (say, the time of Cain and Abel), human beings have been homicidal maniacs. Yet, for untold ages, something was missing, something with the capacity to raise their murderous mania to truly magnificent heights. Only very late in human history—perhaps 10,000 years ago…
Bitcoin for Beginners
Editor’s Pick. Written by Jeffrey Tucker. Understanding Bitcoin requires that we understand the limits of our ability to imagine the future that the market can create for us. Thirty years ago, for example, if someone had said that electronic text—digits flying through the air and landing in personalized inboxes owned by us all that we…
Growing up With Parents
Editor’s Pick. Lecture excerpt by Siri Singh Sahib Ji. In childhood you have never been taught responsibility. You have been shoved and pushed and ordered. The majority of your childhood I have seen in this country is regimented. Nobody uses heart. It is all head thing. So this kind of childhood is very painful. I…