 Why the First Amendment?
by Tibor R. Machan
All the fuss about the various US Supreme and other court rulings pertaining to campaign contributions would, I believe, subside once the matter were put into the right framework, namely, the exercise of the right to private property. It is not about free speech but about freedom to use what belongs to one as he or she--or they-- see fit. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
January 20, 2010 |
Planners and Earthquakes
by Tibor R. Machan
A massive earthquake is only a reminder of what the Austrian economists taught with their research and theoretical work--the most reasonable economic system is one that lets decisions be made on the ground, among the free men and women who make the market do its work. (Read more...)
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On Uniting the Country
by Tibor R. Machan
On January 3rd, just after Meet the Press, NBC-TV broadcast a radio address by President Obama and while I have become nearly completely pessimistic, even cynical, about expecting anything uplifting from politicians these days--I think there could be some and have been a very few--I listened to the whole message. I never quite foreclose the possibility that people will change course, improve, gain new insights, and otherwise depart from their bad habits. (Read more...)
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Saturday
December 26, 2009 |
 The Myth of Surplus Wealth
by Tibor R. Machan
The right to private property is a right of action, an extension of the more general right to liberty: everyone must be left free to pursue wealth, to take those peaceful actions that could result in prosperity (although there is no guarantee that they will). (Read more...)
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A Bit of Good News
by Tibor R. Machan
Private property rights are the bedrock of a bona fide free country. Just for starters, the rights to freedom of religion and the press directly depend on it--if private property can lawfully be taken by state agencies, based on spurious, subjective grounds like blight, any religious or journalistic practice not approved of by state agents becomes vulnerable to censorship or worse. (Read more...)
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Can We Cause Our Actions?
by Tibor R. Machan
In a recent Op Ed column for Free Inquiry magazine--December 09/January10--Mr. Thomas Clark claims that the defense of human agency that some folks, including me, have been advancing for many years involves what he terms “contra-causal” free will. It does not. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
November 11, 2009 |
On Corporation Phobia
by Tibor R. Machan
What would be cool, actually, is if both Michael Moore and Ralph Nader, as well as their admirers, recognized that the bad guys are mainly those in power, the politicians and bureaucrats, not the citizens who, various grouped, are trying to get in on the game of wealth redistribution. (Read more...)
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Soros is Confused Again
by Tibor R. Machan
Whatever it is that Soros is aiming for, one thing is clear: he despises
freedom in the market place. And so long as there is any trace of
respectful discussion of free markets in universities, Soros is going to
spare no money in thwarting it. (Read more...)
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 Vital Ideas in Conflict-Sen versus Bauer
by Tibor R. Machan
A most influential book by Harvard Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen
is Development as Freedom (Knopf, 1999). At first glance the title
suggests that Sen shares the late Peter Bauer’s ideas who argued that
global free market policies would best help the poor everywhere. But that
isn't Sen's message at all. (Read more...)
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The Desperate Defense of Obamacare
by Tibor R. Machan
The political arena has abandoned all civility, it seems. It was coming
our way once folks like Ralph Nader and Michael Moore got to be big wigs,
speaking up in support of populism and a massive federal government. (Read more...)
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Keynes and his Ideology of Planning
by Tibor R. Machan
What Keynes was eager to promote is the idea of the government's
unbridled authority to tinker with economic affairs. That is the point of
insisting so vehemently that nothing exists that stands opposed to that
authority, no notion of Adam Smith's natural liberty, John Locke's natural
rights, and other classical liberal ideas that were at one time beginning
to be used so as to pull the rug from under those who saw fit to interfere
with other people's economic decisions and circumstances. (Read more...)
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Saturday
September 19, 2009 |
The Expanding Public Realm
by Tibor R. Machan
Virtually every time someone promotes increasing the scope of government's
involvement in our lives, the excuse is that the problem being tackled is
a social or public type, not one of individuals. (Read more...)
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Saturday
September 12, 2009 |
 On Respecting the Presidency
by Tibor R. Machan
After one congressman shouted out "liar" during President Obama's speech to
Congress the other evening, one of Mr. Obama's cheerleaders at The New
York Times intoned gravely that even if one disapproves of a given office
holder, one ought to show respect for the office. Well, not really, not
any more. (Read more...)
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Saturday
September 5, 2009 |
It's Not Capitalism, Stupid
by Tibor R. Machan
Any kind of subsidy, a standard policy of various levels of American governments--whereby the government confiscates some citizens' resources and hands these to other citizens--violates the principles of the free market. Those from whom the resources are confiscated have lost their liberty to make use of them in their own market activities. (Read more...)
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Is Fear of Our Government Rational?
by Tibor R. Machan
When society is considered a collective--akin to a team, only not
voluntarily established like most sport teams are--those who see
themselves as its leaders and charged with selecting the goals everyone
must pursue, can quite easily slip into a mode of thinking that construes
all opposition a form of betrayal. (Read more...)
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Our Genuine Collectivism?
by Tibor R. Machan
How can one detect the socialist version of this attempt to revamp the
American system in Mr. Obama & Co.'s proposals? The one straightforward
way is to pay attention to how the regime has accepted one of the most
basic tenets of classical socialism, namely, that wealth is publicly
owned, not by individuals who earned or otherwise honestly came by it. (Read more...)
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Dismissing Your Thoughts
by Tibor R. Machan
Whenever I would voice any of my views about politics, economics, child
rearing or whatever, these folks explained it away by my origins, my
having been born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, then a Soviet
(communist) satellite. Everything I thought and said was deemed to have
been caused by my background. (Read more...)
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Is It All Luck?
by Tibor R. Machan
Well, much may be luck or its absence but much also isn't. This is a case
of what I called in one of my early books, The Pseudo-Science of B. F.
Skinner (1973), the blow up fallacy. It involves taking a picture--i. e.,
considering--some small portion of the world or life and seeing it quite
clearly but then making the leap of applying it to everything. (Read more...)
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Yes, Roger Federer is Human
by Tibor R. Machan
No, there is no way to engineer human beings to be excellent. This is
precisely what makes them so human--however they turn out is to a large
measure their own doing, following their beliefs and choices. (Read more...)
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Truncated "Liberty"
by Tibor R. Machan
In public finance there is a trick well captured by the famous Laffer
Curve. Up to a certain point people will tolerate being taxed and then,
after that point, they won't take it any longer. So governments do well if
they identify that point (not an easy thing because our tolerance level is
not the same). (Read more...)
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Hope versus Reality
by Tibor R. Machan
One main reason that bureaucracies are generally sluggish and unenthusiastic
about serving the public--as distinct from private vendors--is this
element of constant competition, combined with the fact that bureaucrats
gain their income from taxes which can often be raised with impunity by
those who hire them. (Read more...)
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Mini Business Ethics & Freedom
by Tibor R. Machan
Freedom does not promise perfection by a long shot. (Read more...)
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Catering to Altruists
by Tibor R. Machan
It is pathetic how perverse an idea of political leadership guides this
new president. He should back off already. (Read more...)
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Do All of us Expect to be Millionaires?
by Tibor R. Machan
Sunday is the day when even profit making broadcasters must do service or
pro bono work. And this mostly consists of broadcasting programs
misleadingly labeled "public affairs." (I say this because none of these
programs is actually about what matters to everyone, to the public, but
only to one or another special interest group and, mostly to bureaucrats
and their groupies.)
(Read more...)
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 "Rewards" of Determinism?
by Tibor R. Machan
Anytime in arguments among intellectuals motivations are introduced, one
risks taking a false step. First, few people know why others champion a
position on some controversial topic, although sometimes one can guess
fairly well. Still, it is strictly speaking bad form to raise the issue of
motives. (Read more...)
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