Robert Higgs Exposes Delusions of Power Why have so many Americans abandoned the Jeffersonian principle that the best government is that which governs least? In his new book, Delusions of Power: New Explorations of the State, War, and Economy, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs suggests that part of the reason is that we...
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When goods and services are free, people tend to consume more of them. Does this maxim apply to government spending and taxation? In other words, when people can receive federal benefits without paying taxes, do they demand more of them even if they’re funded by deficits? That possibility troubled John C. Calhoun. In 1810,...
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Are human beings better suited for individualism or collectivism? The question seems highly relevant to issues of political economy, but it’s one that very few advocates of individual liberty have sought to answer by looking at the anthropological record. This neglect is unfortunate, economist Thomas Mayor suggests, because the evidence indicates that for millennia...
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We are delighted to announce the publication of the Spring 2012 issue of the Independent Institute’s peer-reviewed journal, The Independent Review. This issue’s articles and book reviews deal with the following questions: What does evidence from hunter-gatherer societies suggest about whether human beings are better adapted for individualism or collectivism? Read the article. What...
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For most of its history, the U.S. government maintained a policy of transferring acquired lands to private owners and to the states. This changed around the turn of the 20th century, however, as the Progressives preached the “gospel of efficiency,” a doctrine that hailed the scientific management of natural resources by enlightened public servants....
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Many books and articles have been written about the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Unfortunately, much of this literature is deeply flawed, mistakenly treating, for example, unscrupulous mortgage lenders and securities dealers as the primary cause of the calamity rather than as factors subordinate to more fundamental causes. One book exempt from this criticism is...
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I often disagree with Matthew Yglesias, but I found myself cheering when I read parts of his Slate column on President Obama’s State of the Union Speech. The president’s stated wish to protect domestic jobs by hindering trade is, Yglesias writes, “a strikingly retrograde, self-contradictory, and confused agenda of reviving American prosperity through mercantilism.”...
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No issue during the recent financial crisis aroused more passion than the bailouts of large banks and other financial institutions. Polls conducted during the peak of the crisis in September 2008 revealed that the American public overwhelmingly objected to the bailouts. Yet, although numerous books and articles have reported on the crisis, few have...
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Pundits of late have been lamenting the decline of technological innovation. Has the rate of innovation in fact slowed down? And if so, how can we best revive it and speed up the rate of economic progress? Independent Institute Research Director Alex Tabarrok offers his penetrating insights on this hot topic in his new...
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Ivan Eland‘s new book, No War for Oil: U.S. Dependency and the Middle East, challenges a long-standing pillar of U.S. foreign policy—the belief that U.S. national and economic security require that American taxpayers fund the military protection of oil-rich foreign lands, especially in the Persian Gulf. According to Eland, senior fellow at the Independent...
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