Frédéric Bastiat is justifiably famous among believers in liberty. His many classic contributions include The Law and his essays “Government” and “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen,” not to mention some of the best reductio ad absurdum arguments ever (such as “The Candlemakers’ Petition” and “The Negative Railway”) and more. Less well known are other essays, such as his election manifesto of 1846, which illustrated what a principled politician who believed in liberty would stand for.
However, far fewer people seem to be very aware of Bastiat’s Economic Harmonies, which was to be his magnum opus but was cut short by his Christmas Eve death at only age 49.
I found that strikingly illustrated when I recently reread chapter 4, “Exchange,” in Economic Harmonies. Not only does

Henry Hazlitt, a great champion of liberty and Austrian economics, was born on November 28, 1894. His most famous book, Economics in One Lesson, remains a best seller thirty years after his death.
Original Article: Remembering the Great Henry Hazlitt on His Birthday

One of the cliches of the New Deal was that businesses were entitled to a “fair” profit. Leonard Read astutely pointed out that profits (and losses) have nothing to do with “fairness.”
Original Article: Are Businesses Entitled to a Fair Profit?

(Originally published July 1, 2004.)
Historians have trivialized Calvin Coolidge as a do-nothing President naive enough to believe that "the business of America is business," and many have rated him as one of the worst of all time. However, he produced remarkable results without sacrificing our freedoms. And given that he was born on the 4th of July, there is no better time than our Independence Day to remember him. Under Coolidge, the top income tax rate of 65% under Wilson was eventually cut to 20%. The stock market began its unprecedented "roaring 20s" climb as it became clear through 1924 that Coolidge’s tax reduction bill would pass. In both his first and last year in office, federal receipts were $3.8 billion and expenditures were $3.1 billion, and in between, he cut the national

One of the political trends of the past few years has been an expanding disconnect between political unity rhetoric and the increasing disharmony politicians’ proposals create.
The root of this beltway cognitive dissonance is the rapid increase in government power. Unity rhetoric helps mobilize candidates’ political bases and can sway some independents, helping win elections. However, their postelection expansion of government power into areas where people have dramatically or even diametrically opposed beliefs about Washington’s legitimate role, combined with the fact that government can give nothing it does not first take, guarantees growing disharmony. Once such choices are appropriated into government hands, there is only the question of whose preferences will be imposed on others.
One

Progressives claim that perhaps individual freedom might be appropriate for a simpler society but that as society grows more complex, the need for government grows. As Leonard Read pointed out, however, greater complexity requires greater freedom, not less.
Original Article: The More Complex the Society, The Less Government Control We Need

November 28 marks the 1894 birth of one of American history’s most prolific public intellectuals—Henry Hazlitt. According to Llewellyn Rockwell, Hazlitt “was familiar with the work of every important thinker in nearly every field” and “wrote in every important public forum of his day.” His published work as a journalist, literary critic, philosopher, and economist ran to roughly ten million words before his death in 1993, including perhaps the most popular economics book ever written—Economics in One Lesson (though looking back on that book later, Hazlitt concluded that “so far as the politicians are concerned . . . the lesson . . . does not seem to have been learned anywhere”).
According to Tom Malone, “What set Hazlitt apart from other writers on economics was the incredible clarity of

In my experience of public policy discussions, one of the most frequent weasel words used as an intended trump (not Trump) card has been “fair.”
Like another commonly played political trump card, “need,” fairness does not have a clear meaning. That provides a great deal of wiggle room for equivocation, almost always used to justify forcing some Americans to pay for what someone else wants.
Fairness has no universal meaning beyond “more for me or those I care about” or “I want, but I do not want to pay for.” I learned that decades ago from my children, who wielded the word almost exclusively to advance their narrow self-interests. For instance, when my daughter—who as the oldest had more responsibility and a bigger allowance—complained, it was because having more responsibility was “unfair”

Americans live in a complex world. That has made those who argue for ever-growing statism to often claim that “the more complex the society, the more government control we need.” One major reason is that this claim allows them to assert that even if liberty was appropriate in a long-past, simple “horse and buggy” age (as when America began as a country), it cannot possibly be so now.
When I hear such an assertion, the first thing I think of is whether the world we face today really is more complex for us than in the distant past. Regarding how much technology is in use, the world is clearly more complex. However, with regard to how many different skills and abilities someone in that distant past needed to survive, I am not so sure. A single person in the past might have to build their own

Rent control is all the rage with progressives, with several states and localities trying to impose it. However, when people have their property effectively—and legally—stolen, there are long-term consequences.

Original Article: "Call Rent Control What It Really Is: Theft"

President Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appointees have an affinity for returning to an earlier era’s antitrust enforcement, sometimes summarized as a “big is bad” or “neo-Brandeisian” approach. The most famous (or notorious) current example is the FTC’s opposition to the proposed merger between Microsoft and Activision.
In their words, the merger would give Microsoft “both the means and motive to harm competition.” How could that happen? Supposedly by “manipulating Activision’s pricing, degrading Activision’s game quality or player experience on rival consoles and gaming services, changing the terms and timing of access to Activision’s content, or withholding content from competitors entirely, resulting in harm to consumers.”
However, the FTC’s fears about higher prices for

The Federal Trade Commission is heavily scrutinizing the proposed merger between Microsoft and Activism. Why? Sony is against it, demonstrating that antitrust law is about protecting favored producers, not consumers.

Original Article: "The FTC Should Answer Its Call of Duty to Gamers"

What many people call government generosity Leonard Read called avarice.

Original Article: "To Avarice No Sanction"

All too often, unscrupulous businesses weaponize the United States’ antitrust laws—which are only supposed to be utilized to protect consumers against higher prices and other consequences of monopoly power—for their own self-serving purposes. Professor Thomas DiLorenzo explained this problem more than a third of a century ago in a piece titled “The Rhetoric of Antitrust.” He wrote that “In theory antitrust regulation promotes competition in the marketplace but in reality its results are often anticompetitive. It is routinely used by businesses having problems competing.”
A key to understanding the difference between competition as a process benefiting consumers and competition as a misnomer for protecting those who are (or are afraid of) being outcompeted for consumer favor was revealed in

Leonard Read asked how we preserve liberty in a culture that doesn’t appreciate it. Liberty cannot come through force and organization. It comes from within oneself.

Original Article: "Smarter Talk Is Smarter Action"

As reported by Reason, Colorado—one of thirty-one states that had banned its local governments from imposing rent control—is considering repealing that ban. Recent efforts to allow or impose similar controls have also taken place in New York, California, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Minnesota. However, there is a good reason that most states still ban the local imposition of rent control laws.
The key reason is that the primary advantage of local determination in a federal system—allowing people mistreated by one government body to better protect themselves by “voting with their feet” to less abusive jurisdictions—does not apply to rent control laws. That is because neither selling nor moving allows owners of rental property to escape the imposed burdens.
In many circumstances, voting with

American law protects what is called the "right to strike." However, Leonard Read found no moral code that permits such action.

Original Article: "There Is No Moral Right to Strike"

“No point in the field of political economy merits more thought and analysis than where to draw the line distinguishing the functions proper to government from the role assumed by all-out government—socialism. A good society is but a dream unless this issue be reasonably resolved.”
This is how Leonard Read opened chapter 9, “To Avarice No Sanction,” in his 1972 book, To Free or Freeze: That Is the Question. While he addressed that question from multiple angles in his writing, here he takes his cue from Austin O’Malley’s statement that “all fallen nations lost liberty through avarice which engendered injustice.” Read concludes that a nation should “never admit a law to the statute books that makes an appeal to avarice.”
Government . . . means laws backed by force. To know what government

More than forty years ago, Leonard Read urged graduates of Hillsdale College to find a premise, a belief in a universal idea of liberty.

Original Article: "Living by a Premise"

Americans have long thought of themselves as people of action.
As Leonard Read noted in his article “How to Gain Liberty,” the sentiment “I want less talk and more action” is (or at least once was) common among Americans. It even extends to situations when people recognize that their liberties are threatened. But then the question arises as to what sorts of action are appropriate in defense of our liberties:
Thus speak Americans when they suddenly awaken to the fact that their liberties are endangered. Talk, they say, is useless; only action counts. But perhaps talk and action aren’t necessarily opposites. What if studying, talking, writing, and explaining should turn out to be the only worthwhile action there is? What then?
The issue arises because not all actions in response to

Should political reform be the result of a much-discussed comprehensive plan? Or should it come about through decentralized decision-making that deals with the situations at hand?

Original Article: "Comprehensive Reform versus Piecemeal Reform"

Americans are in a time of rising labor unrest and activism, including multiple unionization campaigns, regulatory and legal changes to make it easier for unionization efforts to succeed, the “Fight for $15” minimum wage agitation, and the Hollywood writer’s strike. However, such discussions and campaigns seldom approach the issues involved from a moral perspective, beyond the implicit presumption that trying to force others to give you a raise must be moral.
That is why it is worth reconsidering Leonard Read’s bold argument that “There Is No Moral Right to Strike” in his The Coming Aristocracy (1969): “Rarely challenged is the right to strike. While nearly everyone in the population, including the strikers themselves, will acknowledge the inconvenience and dangers of strikes, few will

The 2023 graduation season is now underway. The famous, generous, and politically powerful (especially those currently in federal office, who are cheaper because they are banned from being paid for giving speeches) will be dispensing (often very limited) wisdom about the “real world” to hundreds of commencement audiences across America.
Some of the best speakers, however, will provide insight from humanity’s accumulated wisdom. One such speaker, unfortunately no longer with us, was Leonard Read, the founder and soul of the Foundation for Economic Education, which made him a central part of efforts to defend and expand liberty in America and throughout the world.
In particular, I would like to note the commencement speech he gave at Hillsdale College on June 3, 1972, published in Imprimis

In the previous two articles in this three-part series on bipartisan comprehensive political reform, we dealt with the excuses for extortion and evasion such claims for reform provide and with the fact that such claims often lead to more comprehensive ignorance being applied to social problems. Now, we turn to the question of comprehensive reform versus piecemeal reform.
When it comes to bipartisan comprehensive political reform, beyond its rhetorical use to enable government abuses along with its massive destruction of usable information and inaccurate accounting of the costs of government, there is still another issue. The presumption that comprehensive political plans must be preferred over piecemeal improvements is highly questionable.
As Friedrich Hayek has noted, “in complex

Politicians tout "bipartisanship"—that often just means one’s pocket will be picked even more cleanly.

Original Article: "Bipartisanship Is Not a Substitute for Voluntary Exchange"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Besides using bipartisan comprehensive political reform as a cover for evasion and extortion, the many political abuses of posturing, window dressing, and maneuvering enabled do not exhaust the problems involved. Those problems are, instead, far more comprehensive, especially when it comes to the amount of usable information that is accessible, including accurate information about the true costs of government programs.
As Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and many others have clearly laid out, centralizing decisions in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats requires that many valuable details of time, place, and circumstance, which can be known only to those directly involved, must be discarded from the decision-making process.
Substituting political determination for voluntary

Have you ever thought about the relationship between the words liberty and freedom? Frequently, the words are used interchangeably, but I have always preferred liberty.
Perhaps my preference goes back to Thomas Jefferson’s reference to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps it traces to Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death.” Perhaps it is because “with liberty and justice for all” is “the most important phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance,” according to Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen. In a more analytical sense, it could come from John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty” and its contrast between freedom to act and the absence of coercion, or Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between positive liberty (often the meaning when

It’s popular for politicians to claim they will never cut Social Security. But doing nothing now about the program means imposing an even larger hit on seniors in the future. 

Original Article: "Why Biden’s Spending Is Unsustainable"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

As the State of the Union address and subsequent pronouncements have made clear, American politics is in the firm grip of fiscal illusion.
One example is President Biden’s bragging that “In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion—the largest deficit reduction in American history,” which implied that we should only look at a short run effect which had little, if anything, to do with the policies he adopted, in evaluating his fiscal policy.
However, he did not mention that the CBO estimates that the average yearly federal deficit over the next decade will be $1.6 trillion (under current policies, not including any expansions that have not yet been enacted), which implies his current policies continue to massively rip off future generations.

When we see real bipartisan action in Congress, it usually is for the worst.

Original Article: "Why You Should Fear "Bipartisan" Agreements in Congress"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

Nobel Prize–winning economist George Stigler once wrote of economists as preachers, which he described as involving offering “a clear and reasoned recommendation (or, more often, denunciation) of a policy or form of behavior by men or societies of men,” particularly with respect to the ethics of market competition. With regard to defending those ethics (i.e., defending mutually voluntary arrangements that individuals make with one another versus involuntary arrangements forced on some by others), I fit in his preacher category. I find the violation of people’s rights and of public policies that impose or necessitate such abuses immensely grating.
When Donald Trump announced his intent to “Make America Great Again” (soon advertised on MAGA hats), the preacher in me applauded the tax

After the recent midterm election, when it became apparent that Americans would have a divided new Congress, it wasn’t long before the word bipartisan started showing up as an adjective to modify a whole host of legislative proposals and discussions. While in many cases the word has been aspirational rather than descriptive—as in, “the other side should follow our lead in agreeing to this”—it has often also been used as a magic modifier in an effort to reduce criticism and grease the skids to more political support for proposals.
Unfortunately, especially with the country as sharply divided as it is now, what is advertised as political efforts at bipartisanship often founders on the shoals of claims that only “comprehensive” reforms are worthy of support. And President Biden’s State of the

Contrary to the claim that taxpayer subsidies for higher education provide great social benefits, these subsidies actually are a wealth transfer from the less-well-off to wealthy people.

Original Article: "Subsidizing Higher Education Is Not Creating Widespread External Benefits"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon.

As former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman Timothy J. Muris has recently noted, “President Biden rejects the economics-driven antitrust policies of the past 40 years.” In contrast, President Joe Biden “promised to return to earlier antitrust traditions.” Unfortunately, “those traditions were abandoned for good reason: they harmed consumers.”

President Biden’s student debt relief proposal created a storm of controversy. That is not surprising, since it was a transparent (and apparently successful) attempt to buy the votes of an important Democratic constituency, even though it created a target-rich environment for critics.

Since I am an economist and my school year is not too far along, my classroom discussion of how all of economics traces back to the fact of scarcity (the combination of limited resources, which implies a limited ability to produce, along with wants that always exceed the amount that can be produced) facing everyone was quite recent.

Foundation for Economic Education founder and cornerstone Leonard Read always had an ear out for widely accepted but misleading clichés that served to aggrandize government power and limit liberty. In his 1965 “A Cliché of Socialism: Under Public Ownership, We the People Own It!” He focused his attention on the large gap between public ownership of assets and the idea that “we the people” own them.

"Seniors hurt in Ponzi scam" headlined the story of elderly Southern Californians bilked in a pyramid scheme. While sad, the story reminded me of Social Security, since it is also a Ponzi scheme involving those older, with high payoffs to early recipients coming from pockets of later participants. With Social Security, however, it benefits those older at others’ expense.

As someone who teaches public finance (better termed the economics of government), I can’t count how many times I have heard politicians promise “comprehensive” reforms to some major problem. But what such efforts actually produce is always different from what is promised, because such achievements are beyond government’s competence.

The labor theory of value has long undermined people’s understanding of the miracles created by markets and rationalized various incarnations of socialism which mangle those miracles. Leonard Read understood why undoing that misunderstanding by all who hold to it, as well as those who just use it as an excuse for what they want government to impose on unwilling citizens, is of immense value to each of us.

I have taught economics long enough that I have made use of a variety of “trick” questions in introductory courses. I have found them, used well, to be pedagogically helpful. But not everyone agrees.

Because my economics courses focus on public policy, I often deal with benefit-cost analyses (BCA) in them. While little discussed, the central idea is simply to identify and include all the relevant benefits and costs of a decision, do our best to estimate their values, then choose the option that provides the greatest net benefits. Hardly a radical idea. It can be useful in disciplining our thinking to be more consistent. Benjamin Franklin employed a version of it.

Three city blocks were systematically burned to the ground as hundreds of the local police stood by and viewed the violence. They were obeying orders not to harm the arsonists. The National Guard was called, adding more armed watchers. A passive gendarmerie consorting with open rebellion has rarely been seen in American history, until recently.

The recent GameStop short-squeeze drama has riveted financial markets. Given the historic unpopularity of short sellers (e.g., Holman Jenkins has written that “short-selling is…widely unpopular with everyone who has a stake in seeing stock prices go up”), the resulting heightened invective against them is not a surprise.

California’s government has become infamous for abusing its citizens, from steep taxation to burdensome regulations to arbitrary covid impositions. But less noticed is how it is also trying to abuse other Americans as well.

Twenty-twenty marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of a book that has had an expanding influence on the public conversation about market competition. Robert Frank and Philip Cook’s 1995 The Winner-Take-All Society argued that there are an increasing number of markets in which small differences in performance give rise to enormous differences in rewards.

After becoming the apparent president-elect, Joe Biden clearly promised to unify Americans. However, that promise was in sharp contrast to what his campaign promises would actually achieve.

Grand invocations that “I will unify us” are actually shorthand for “We mean to get our way, regardless of others’ well-being and desire.”

As Americans approach a date with their polling places and “get out the vote” campaigns crescendo, there is plenty of rhetoric that all but deifies democracy.

Rather than choose among a group of narcissists desperate to become popular by redistributing the income of others, why not choose officeholders by lot for a single term?

I have long been fascinated by both public policy and the interesting crooks, crannies, and oddities found in the English language. Recently, I came across one such tidbit which connected both of those interests. Hugh Rawson, in “Janus Words—Two-faced English” on the Cambridge Dictionary blog, was discussing a number of English words that are sometimes called Janus words, after the Roman god depicted with two faces pointing in opposite directions, because they have opposite meanings within themselves (e.g., cleave, hew, sanction, scan, peruse).

Recently, I was reminded of John F. Kennedy’s most famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” when I heard it among several famous sound bites leading into a radio show segment. It also reminded me that we will hear it more soon, as we are approaching JFK’s May 29 birthday. However, it is worth reconsidering what it means.

Over the years, one of the most common trump cards used to justify government treating people differently, rather than equally, has been the word need. And when used to override individuals’ ownership of themselves and what they produce, its usage has created confusion rather than clarity. In public discussion, “need” has increasingly morphed into one of its synonyms—essential, as in “essential jobs.” But it still suffers from many of the same analytical problems.

At least since I first read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, I have been a student of the use of weasel words. I have joined what he called the “struggle against the abuse of language,” because “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

As has happened before with many natural disasters, the COVID-19 panic is leading to complaints of shortages and “gouging,” which about two-thirds of US states have passed laws against (often in terms so vague that it makes any enforcement discretionary, and thus discriminatory). But rather than complaining of shortages and gouging, critics should realize that “gouging” is the solution to shortages, not a cost in addition to them.

That Americans are in the throes of a crisis in democracy has become a commonplace refrain of late. I have noticed that almost all such commentary treats political democracy, implicitly or explicitly, as the ideal. Yet in truth it is a seriously flawed ideal. In fact, as F. A. Hayek noted years ago.

That there are inherent benefits in diversity is a common article of faith in our democratic/populist times. We hear it in and about universities, businesses, politics, entertainment, etc. Typically, though, we hear about it in terms of forcing more diversity on those whose diversity in a particular dimension doesn’t measure up to someone else’s arbitrary standard.

Discussions about the incentive effects of taxes can be misleading. The focus is usually on the tax rates imposed. But one’s incentives are not best measured by tax rates, but by how much value created for others (reflected in consumers’ willingness to pay) is retained by the creator, which I refer to as take-home income.

When Mother Teresa used her Nobel Prize money to fund services for the poor, she was exhibiting "self-interest," but not selfishness. Like virtually everyone else, she used her property to achieve an end she valued, but which benefited others as well, writes Gary Galles.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Robert Hale.

Government likes to put out lots of data showing things like income and employment for huge numbers of people. The problem is, this tells us almost nothing about how real-life people are hurt or helped by government intervention, writes Gary Galles.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Robert Hale.

Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito

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Economists can use their knowledge for both good and evil, and for those in government, such knowledge is often used to deceive and make government programs look less costly than they are, writes Gary Galles.This audio Mises Daily is narrated by Keith Hocker.