Reason‘s A. Barton Hinkle has a nice piece about one of the clearest examples of what goes wrong when the government steps in to manage a market that should be free: A decade or so ago, Minneapolis (population 300,000-plus) allowed a grand total of 343 taxis to operate until Luis Paucar, an immigrant, filed suit. …
Author Archives: Mark
Check out Radley Balko’s new digs
Radley Balko, whom I think I can safely say is admired by everyone at Nobody’s Business, is now posting at his new digs at HuffPo. His first post is the infuriating story of how the the Pima County, Arizona SWAT team that shot a U.S. Marine named Jose Guerena during a drug raid that didn’t …
Explaining things, Part 3 – Compassion
A couple of weeks ago over at the Agitator, guest blogger Peter Moskos asked libertarians to explain a few things to him. The Agitatortots answered him in the comments, but I thought answering him here would make for a good intro to libertarianism. First I addressed the way he framed his question, explaining why calling …
Explaining things, Part 2 – Force and Freedom
Over at the Agitator, guest blogger Peter Moskos wants libertarians to explain a few things to him. The Agitatortots have been answering him in the comments, but I thought it would be a good exercise to answer him here. A few days ago, I talked about why calling libertarianism an ideology isn’t helpful. Today, I …
Continue reading “Explaining things, Part 2 – Force and Freedom”
Explaining things, Part 1 – Ideology
Over at the Agitator, guest blogger Peter Moskos wants libertarians to explain a few things to him. The Agitatortots have been answering him in the comments, but I thought it would be a good exercise to answer him here. Despite being a fan of tax-and-spend government policies and income redistribution, I’m also sympathetic to small …
Keynes vs. Hayek, Round 2
It seems to me that since we’re calling ourselves “libertarian,” someone ought to post the sequel to last year’s Keynes vs. Hayek rap video, “Fear the Boom and Bust”. (My favorite part is when Hayak unexpectedly stumbles upon a copy of Keynes’s General Theory.) After you’ve see the first one, check out the new one, …
On the need to understand anti-porn morality
I don’t understand how some people can be so obsessed with with pornography. I’m not talking about people who watch it, I’m talking about people who do things like this: Morality in Media announced today the mobilization of its War on Illegal Pornography coalition in a three-day effort to flood the U. S. Attorney General …
Continue reading “On the need to understand anti-porn morality”
How to win the fight for freedom in America
The story first came out yesterday afternoon of yet another screwed-up police raid. (And if you read Radley Balko a lot, you won’t be surprised to learn that it happened in Broward County, Florida.) Things didn’t quite turn out the way the police expected: Broward Circuit Court Judge Ilona Holmes, her sister and her sister’s …
Continue reading “How to win the fight for freedom in America”
Chinese prosperity is not necessarily a threat
Yesterday, my Esteemed Co-Blogger Rogier posted with some concern about a recent IMF forecast that the United States will soon no longer be the world’s largest economy. According to a Brett Arends at MarketWatch, this will be a disaster: According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real …
Continue reading “Chinese prosperity is not necessarily a threat”
We call them “consumers” because they are
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman may have a Nobel prize in economics, but in his recent commentary on the Independent Payment Advisory Board, he sure doesn’t sound like an economist. (I don’t know what to think about the Board itself. On the one hand, price controls are pretty much always a bad idea. Probably …
Continue reading “We call them “consumers” because they are”
Pissed-off Christians destroy mediocre photograph
In France, the Christians are apparently jealous of all the cool extremism the Muslims have been getting away with — fatwas against novelists and comic artists, for example — so some of them decided to raid an art gallery and destroy Andres Serrano’s infamous Piss Christ photograph. I’ve never been that impressed with Serrano, and …
Continue reading “Pissed-off Christians destroy mediocre photograph”
I shrugged too
As someone pithier than I first pointed out, I think I now have an idea how Jewish kids feel at Christmas time. Lots of other people in the libertarian blogosphere are really excited about the new Atlas Shrugged movie, but I just can’t bring myself to care. People have told me that, given my libertarian …