Migrants prepared for the Darién crossing in Necoclí, shopping for tents, flashlights and water-purification pills. The passage through the Darién requires hiking along muddy paths in dense, roadless jungle for a couple of days or more, with little access to fresh water or defense against mosquitoes. The cost of a trek like the one Mr. Huang was attempting ranges from $7,000 to $10,000 to pay for smugglers, transportation and lodging, Chinese migrants say. The going rate for more direct or safer smuggling routes, such as air passage to Mexico where snakehead “agents” bribe customs officials to let Chinese in with forged travel documents, is $60,000 or more, the migrants say. This is from Wenxin Fan and Shen Lu, “Fleeing China, Many Take Dangerous Route to U.S.,” Wall Street Journal, April 16 (April 17 print edition.) The news item is a page 1 story and it’s good old-fashioned WSJ reporting. I would love to quote almost every paragraph. These Chinese people are seeking asylum in the United States, and a large percent of them get it, but to get to the southern border, they need to take huge risks. The biggest challenge is crossing the Darien Gap. Imagine how much better things would be, for them and for us U.S. taxpayers, if the U.S. government made it easy for Chinese people to come here and claim asylum and in return charged, say, $30,000 to go towards reducting the federal deficit. There would be tens of thousands of takers, fewer lives lost, and productive people coming due to the selection bias of paying $30,000. Do they come here to work? I would bet almost all of them do, given the age at which they come. But they are also seeking liberty. Remember when many Americans welcomed people who fled from authoritarian and totalitarian governments? (0 COMMENTS)

1. Well run tax havens. (UAE, Singapore, Switzerland) 2. Spacious and stable English speaking countries. (Australia, US, Canada, New Zealand) 3. Easy entry points to the EU. (Portugal, Greece) 4. The Jewish homeland. (Israel) Anything I missed? The Financial Times has an article on how three cities are booming in the post-Covid world: Millionaire populations dropped by 12 per cent last year in New York, 14 per cent in Hong Kong, and 15 per cent in Moscow. Dubai, Singapore and Miami are deliberately exploiting this migration by opening their doors to capitalists. These global cities rank among the most appealing to millionaire migrants — and make up the top three among luxury property markets where prices are expected to rise fastest this year. It’s not just the pull of these relatively low tax/regulation cities, it’s also the push of badly run cities elsewhere: Cracks in New York — high taxes, surging crime, simmering anti-capitalist hostility — are reflected in the flight to no taxes and a warm welcome in Miami. A similar effect is visible in Moscow, where a heavy-handed Kremlin and world reaction to the war in Ukraine are chasing rich Russians out. Instead they are opting for more hospitable options, including Dubai. Meanwhile, regulatory pressure from Beijing is driving tycoons to buy second homes in Singapore. Other places would also like to attract millionaires, but it’s easier said than done: Many other countries want to emulate Dubai’s success, including Zimbabwe, which hopes to remake Victoria Falls as a similar hub. Zimbabwe?  I’m not sure if corruption, crime and hyperinflation is the right combination to attract the global elite.   (0 COMMENTS)

While most people accept that business are in the business of pursuing profits, this pursuit nevertheless prompts many complaints, In two previous posts, I outlined ten objections to the profit motive, and I tried to counter each in turn. In this post, I offer ten more complaints that allegedly result from the pursuit of profits. See what you think of this next set, and let me know your thoughts in the comments!   21- Manipulation of financial markets Entrepreneurs have manipulated financial markets in the past and are likely to do so in the future. One of the more notorious examples was the Hunt brothers’ attempt to corner the silver market back in 1980. They lost over $4 billion in the attempt. On the other hand, the Federal Reserve Bank manipulates financial markets as part of its charter. Its easy money policies contributed to the inflation of the 1970s, the Dot Com bubble, the Housing Bubble, and the current wave of bank runs. While financial manipulation by an individual or a firm may cause serious problems, the impact of government manipulation is usually far more widespread and devastating.   22- Expansion of insider trading Making insider trading both legal and public would be a service to investors. Company officials buying or selling large amounts of their own stock would be a useful indicator of the company’s health. While insider trading is not inherently immoral, government officials trading stocks based on their knowledge of pending votes is immoral and all too frequent.   23- Controlling government policies Firms can’t control government policies without government acquiescence. That said, industry influence is unavoidable given government intervention in the marketplace. When an agency is created to regulate an industry, where can it go for industry expertise other than the industry itself? Who has more incentive to lobby the agency than industry leaders? When bureaucrats retire from the agency, where can they go for second careers other than the industry about which they’ve spent their professional lives learning?   24- Disregard of human rights Companies have been accused of human rights violations by building “sweatshop” factories in developing countries. In cases in which activists have succeeded in shutting down those factories, however, the laid-off workers have often had to resort to prostitution and drug trafficking to stay alive. Working conditions that Americans find unacceptable are often the best options that people in impoverished nations have. Taking away those options doesn’t make their lives better however good it makes activists feel.   25- Ignoring consumer needs Companies that ignore consumer needs don’t stay in business long. By contrast, governments routinely ignore consumer needs. Unlike private firms, they don’t have to cater to consumers to stay in business.   26- Incompetent distribution of funds Companies that incompetently distribute their funds don’t stay in business long. By contrast, governments are routinely profligate with taxpayer dollars.   27- Corrupt leadership As opposed to Obama, Trump, and Biden who routinely ignored their oaths to abide by the Constitution? The ESG (environmental, social, governance) movement’s whole aim is to corrupt corporate leadership, redirecting their efforts away from their fiduciary and contractual responsibilities and toward “social justice” issues that are not only ill-defined but beyond both their control and competence.   28- Lack of consumer choice What happened to Bernie Sanders’ complaint that consumers “don’t need 23 choices of deodorant”? Which is it, too much choice or too little?   29- Ignoring consumer safety Companies whose products hurt people are subject to fines, lawsuits, and bankruptcy. By contrast, government agencies that cause harm face no such penalties. For example, what recourse does a patient have when the FDA is slow to approve a life-saving drug that has been on the market in Europe for years? Perfection is not an option. People can be hurt by nearly any human activity. Ideally, the injured should be able to obtain restitution from those responsible. While our tort system does enable people to obtain compensation from private individuals and companies, the government often refuses to pay compensation for the damages that its actions cause.   30- Tampering with medical research results The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires drug companies to conduct clinical trials to show the effectiveness and safety of their own drugs. Yes, the FDA establishes strict guidelines for drug trials, reviews the reports, analyzes trial data, and can require additional studies. However, its requirement that companies test their own drugs creates an inherent conflict of interest. Moreover, if a drug does cause harm, the fact that it has been approved by the FDA can reduce the manufacturer’s liability. The problem is less with the profit motive than with the perverse incentives that FDA regulations have created.     Richard Fulmer worked as a mechanical engineer and a systems analyst in industry. He is now retired and does free-lance writing. He has published some fifty articles and book reviews in free market magazines and blogs. With Robert L. Bradley Jr., Richard wrote the book, Energy: The Master Resource. (0 COMMENTS)

It is often contended that the belief that a person is solely responsible for his own fate is held only by the successful. This in itself is not so unacceptable as its underlying suggestion, which is that people hold this belief because they have been successful. I, for one, am inclined to think that the connection is the other way round and that people often are successful because they hold this belief. Though a man’s conviction that all he achieves is due solely to his exertions, skill, and intelligence may be largely false, it is apt to have the most beneficial effects on his energy and circumspection. And if the smug price of the successful is often intolerable and offensive, the belief that success depends wholly on him is probably the pragmatically most effective incentive to successful action; whereas the more a man indulges in the propensity to blame others or circumstances for his failures, the more disgruntled and ineffective he tends to become. (pp. 82-83) This is from Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty. I wish I had remembered this quote years ago when I discussed President Obama’s famous speech in which he said to successful businessmen, “You didn’t build that.” (0 COMMENTS)

As the newly appointed Director for the Stephenson Institute for Classical Liberalism at Wabash College, I recently had the honor and privilege of hosting a fascinating and passionate scholar-scientist, Carl Hart. Professor Hart participated in a series of scholarly events dedicated to the topic of his most recent book. He makes essentially the same argument as the parable of Learnerville. But Hart’s applied area of research is neither books, nor the prohibition thereof. Instead, Hart is deeply fascinated by and passionate about psychoactive substances – drugs. Hart’s latest, Drug Use for Grown Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, is a tour de force and a refreshing reminder of the core insight of the liberal tradition. The existence of risk is not a sufficient argument to suppress individual liberty. In so far as freedom is a pre-requisite for discovery and innovation, progress demands erring on the side of permission rather than prohibition. Hart has a long and established career as a laboratory pyschopharmacologist and a faculty member at Columbia University, during which he has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers. He argues clearly, boldly, and soulfully that there is something deeply illiberal about how our society thinks about and criminalizes drugs. The clear and consistent findings of a lifetime of academic research and the similar evidentiary findings across entire fields of related study unequivocally demonstrate that the overwhelming benefits of drugs exceed their costs, even supposedly “hard” drugs. Yes, Carl Hart is serious! The methods of Hart’s discipline are straightforward. He solicits participants, designs control parameters, administers substances, and then observes, records, measures, and compares the results. Intuitively but controversially, the primary reported and observed effects of drugs are positive. It’s not terribly complicated or mysterious, that drugs have real, measurable and predictable effects. Most abundantly they make people feel good. Combine the above with the fact that sensationalized negative outcomes like fits of rage or self-harm are basically non-existent across the laboratory results. Outside the lab, consequences like addiction and overdose are confined to a small minority of users typically plagued by confounding circumstances like mental health or socio-economic despair. Concerns about long run cognitive impairment are not confirmed by robust evidence. The average drug user is not a junky nor a degenerate, but rather a responsible professional citizen. Such findings persist even for supposedly hard drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and crack cocaine. As a trained economist myself, Hart’s appeal to costs and benefits warmed my heart. As a director of a newly launched center entrusted with the responsibility of curating intellectual discussions that centers on the topic of human freedom and individual liberty, Hart’s title peaked my interests. As an educator, I knew his frequent high-profile podcast appearances would titillate my students. It was a Sunday morning, he was due to arrive the next afternoon. I poured myself a coffee, assured my electronic cigarette was filled and charged, and put a record on the turntable. From my comfortable chair, I sipped my caffeine and puffed my nicotine and from the opening quote by Thomas Jefferson on the first page, I was hooked. “If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” I read the book in its entirety that day, pausing unexpectedly to change records when Hart referenced Gil Scott Heron, Al Green and Billie Holiday in turn. I switched from sipping caffeine to a crafted Manhattan as the day turned into evening. His argument was straightforward, the writing was compassionate, and the story behind his life’s work and lived experiences was profoundly moving. I was impressed by his credentials and perseverance, but mostly I was excited to meet him because I knew we could be friends. Monday morning, I nervously picked up Professor Hart from our on-campus hotel. In the book he described meeting a man with a handlebar moustache, which for him invoked imagery of the Civil War – naturally discomforting to his inescapably black and dreadlocked identity. My first words to Hart, “I too sport a handlebar moustache, but I was going more for a Super Mario rather than Colonial Burnside vibe.” He laughed and tapped my shoulder affectionately, “man, you are a close reader.” I like to think we’ve been friends ever since. He sat in on my special topics course “The Political Economy of Crime and Punishment,” attended a small dinner with interested students, delivered a lunch time lecture the following day, and graciously dined with faculty and students at a closing reception. Our campus community pelted him with questions the entire time. Like his podcast appearances, the questions took a common form, one that Hart early admitted was starting to bore him. “People can’t get over the heroin thing,” he lamented. “They hear these horror stories from teachers, doctors, police, and the media, but they’ve never actually met a scientist in the field, nor looked at the data for themselves.” I told Hart, I was primarily interested in his perspective, because my class was trying to situate drug prohibitions within a broader framework of resolving the social challenges of crime and punishment; and we were further situating crime and punishment in a broader conversation still about the fundamental challenges of political economy. How can societies empower governments to protect and promote individual rights, while minimizing the potential tendencies for governments to jeopardize those same personal freedoms? I asked him if the cost benefit analysis in his argument, could also be applied consistently to other criminal prohibitions: sex work, digital piracy, and censorship come to mind. He seemed to let out a sigh of relief. “You get it man! All anyone wants to ask about is the drugs, but the book isn’t even about that… It’s about freedom.” We did talk about drugs… a lot. I asked Hart questions about hallucinogens and the newly popular micro dosing trend. I shared my general frustrations with our healthcare system. Early in my career, I thought a prescription for Adderall might help to boost productivity. Instead of being trusted as a responsible adult, I was made to endure a psychiatric evaluation and told I would not be given a script without abstaining from caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol for several months. Inversely, when I had a tooth extracted, I was given hefty doses of Vicodin. The drug caused serious digestive side effects, comparable in pain and discomfort to the original infection and post-surgery recovery. Yet, nary a verbal warning from doctor or pharmacist was provided. Carl, like me, is an unapologetic violator of oppressive criminal laws. Heroin and amphetamines are his preferred substances of choice. Across a long and challenging journey of life and career, confronting instances of racial prejudice, academic politics, and threats of political persecution abroad; drugs have served as effective navigational tools on Hart’s pursuit of happiness. Hart’s inferences for reform are bold, but also clear, honest, and supported by scientific evidence. The personal concerns one might have about the supposed risks and harms of drug use, are not a sufficient reason to limit the freedoms and liberties of drug users. Those who experiment with recreational drugs, more often than not, discover effective pharmacological means of feeling joy, alleviating pain, inspiring drive and motivation, or obtaining deep spiritual awakenings. I was curious what key advice his expertise may offer others in navigating our changing drug enforcement landscape. It doesn’t seem to be enough to do your research on the drugs, you need to also be a master manipulator to get doctors to provide what you want, and you need to also be a pseudo legal expert to avoid trouble. No wonder the prison system is so crowded with society’s most under educated and impoverished groups. “I’d tell others to be like you, with the Vicodin… if you think something might suit your needs try it, if it doesn’t… STOP.” Hart is an implicit Classical Liberal, in so far as he believes people possess a better working knowledge of their own interests than the government could hope to possess. Hart is an implicit Hayekian in so far as he recognizes that purchasing and consumption are essentially processes of experimentation and learning.   Daniel J. D’Amico is the Director of the Stephenson Institute for Classical Liberalism and an Affiliated Associate Professor of economics at Wabash College. (0 COMMENTS)

The decision of a Russian “court” to keep Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in jail suggests a few reflections. I put “court” in scare quotes for reasons to be explained below. Political economists are interested in such issues because they widely consider an impartial justice system as one of the essential institutions of a free and free-market society. The Wall Street Journal writes (“Russian Court Upholds WSJ Reporter Evan Gershkovich’s Detention,” April 18, 2022): The hearing was held behind closed doors, as is typical for most hearings connected with espionage charges. It is also exceedingly rare for defendants to win appeals or be acquitted in such cases in Russia, where espionage laws are increasingly wielded for political purposes, according to Western officials, activists and Russian lawyers. … Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, said the journalist “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.” That’s what journalists from free countries do, isn’t it, even without “instructions of the American side”? In my review of Volume 2 of Friedrich Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty, I emphasize why the Nobel economist considered a socialist (or fascist) judge as “a contradiction in terms” (see also his The Constitution of Liberty): Hayek wages a frontal attack against the doctrine of legal positivism, represented by Hans Kelsen, John Austin, and other legal theorists. The doctrine claims that law is simply what is decreed by the sovereign. As Thomas Hobbes put it, “no Law can be Unjust.” In the same vein, Soviet legal theorist Evgeny Pashukanis, wrote that under socialism laws are “converted into administration, all fixed rules into discretion and utility.” Not protected by law, Pashukanis was later eliminated by Stalin. Contrary to state decrees, Hayek argues, law can only be made of general rules that meet general agreement among the public. Quoting Hayek directly Volume 1 of the same work: [A judge’s] task is indeed one which has meaning only within a spontaneous and abstract order of actions such as the market produces. … A judge cannot be concerned with the needs of particular persons or groups, or with ‘reasons of state’ or ‘the will of government’, or with any particular purposes which an order of actions may be expected to serve. Within any organization in which the individual actions must be judged by their serviceability to the particular ends at which it aims, there is no room for the judge. In an order like that of socialism in which whatever rules may govern individual actions are not independent of particular results, such rules will not be ‘justiciable’ because they will require a balancing of the particular interests affected in the light of their importance. Socialism is indeed largely a revolt against the impartial justice which considers only the conformity of individual actions to end-independent rules and which is not concerned with the effects of their application in particular instances. Thus a socialist judge would really be a contradiction in terms. In my review, I wrote: I would add that this crucial point would also apply to a fascist judge, and Hayek would certainly agree. This is why Russian “courts” are courts in name only. They are instruments of government policy. For the same reason, what the apparatchiks call “law” is synonymous with government commands, it’s not law in the classical sense. When Vladimir Putin is said to be a “trained lawyer,” the second term also cries for scare quotes. When Putin said that he wanted a “dictatorship of the law,” he meant nothing more than a dictatorship of the dictator (and perhaps of the majority). In Russia, this is not new. Their plagiarism of Western law is a Potemkin village. Was Gershkovich a spy for the American government? I don’t know, but I know two reasons why it is very unlikely. First, the Wall Street Journal has a reputation and a brand-name value to maintain, which serving as a CIA cover would destroy. After all, the WSJ is not Fox News even if, alas, the two publications have shared a common ownership since late 2007. To sell information, as opposed to entertainment or confirmation bias, a financial newsaper needs to be, and perceived to be, independent. The second reason is that we cannot count on the unrestricted liars in the Russian government nor on their judicial minions to tell us anything useful about journalistic activities. It is true that, over the last 100 years or so in history of the “free world,” the law has not moved in the right direction, as Hayek detected long ago, even crying wolf too early in the opinions of some. Like virtually everything, the liberal rule of law is a matter of degree, at least up to a point. But there is no doubt that Western countries are still freer than Russia, which is why you read this blog. Like many economists who have studied the question (including James Buchanan and, yes, Anthony de Jasay too), we should continue to defend the endangered ideal of (classical) liberalism. (0 COMMENTS)

During 2020, public health authorities occasionally put out false or misleading information, or delayed useful innovations, based on armchair theories about how the public reacts to risk and uncertainty. I recall pundits like Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen pointing out that public health authorities are generally not experts on social psychology, and thus should not try to micromanage the public’s mood. A similar problem can occur with monetary policy.  A new paper by Michael Bauer and Eric Swanson cites a recent example: For example, in the minutes of the FOMC meeting on March 15, 2020, participants were concerned that a strong monetary easing surprise “ran the risk of sending an overly negative signal about the economic outlook.”  [p. 55, footnote] I’ve spent much of my life studying market reactions to monetary policy news, and have the strong impression that the markets are much more worried about what the Fed doesn’t know than what it does know.  Both the Fed and the markets have pretty similar information regarding macroeconomic aggregates and asset market price movements.  The biggest problems arise when the Fed has the wrong model, and makes a decision that market participants view as likely to lead to a negative outcome for the economy.  Lots of these bad decisions occurred in the early 1930s, and again in late 2008.  The fear isn’t that a rate cut will expose an already weak economy, it’s that the Fed won’t cut rates when it’s clear to market participants that a rate cut is appropriate. The preceding is based on my reading of monetary history, not a rigorous study of the data.  But Bauer and Swanson have done such a study and also conclude that the Fed should simply do the right thing, and not second guess how markets will react to their moves: Our results also have important implications for central bank communication and the conduct of monetary policy. First, along with Bauer and Swanson (2021), we find little or no evidence that FOMC announcements have a substantial “Fed information effect” component. Although the minutes of recent FOMC meetings reveal that some participants worried about the potential for counterproductive information effects, our results indicate that policymakers have little need to fear that information effects might attenuate the effects of their announcements, except possibly in exceptional circumstances (which our results cannot rule out).  [p. 55] The Fed should focus on doing the right thing, and not try to second guess how the market will interpret sound monetary policy.     (0 COMMENTS)

A news article caught my eye recently. It was describing the results of recent tax increases in Norway, and the responses to those tax increases which apparently caught the policymakers off guard. This isn’t the first time I’ve made reference to Adam Smith’s famous analogy about social planners and chess, nor will it be the last. But the relevant part of that analogy for this story is when Smith describes how the planner often “does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chessboard of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.” What the policymakers in Norway apparently failed to consider is the way the rich might respond to a tax policy of “soak the rich.” It turns out that more often than not, the rich don’t particularly like being soaked, and when you make it more expensive to live or do business in a particular place, fewer people will want to live or do business there. According to the article, in response to tax increases aimed at “super-rich Norwegians” (apparently defined as multimillionaires or billionaires), these taxpayers are just packing up and leaving Norway, and apparently many “have moved to Switzerland, where taxes are much lower.” The number of wealthy citizens who departed Norway within a few months of this tax increase was “more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years” combined, and “even more super-rich individuals are expected to leave this year” which will end up “costing the government tens of millions [in] lost tax receipts.” Among those who have departed is Kjell Inge Røkke (I hope I’m pronouncing that right!), who in the previous year “was the country’s highest taxed individual.” Not only will the Norwegian government not collect any additional revenue from him due to this tax increase, it will now lose all of the tax revenue he had previously been paying, which will have an impact of “about NOK 175m in lost tax revenue a year.” It was also estimated that “he has paid about NOK 1.5bn in tax since 2008.” Going forward, however, this particular goose will be laying his golden eggs in Lugano. So, how big was this tax increase, to have provoked such a large and swift response? According to the article, the policy change consisted of “a relatively small increase in tax aimed at the country’s super-rich, who face wealth taxes at both the local and state level. That includes a municipal tax of 0.7% on assets in excess of NOK 1.7m for individuals, or NOK 3.4m for couples. There is also a state wealth tax rate of 0.3% on assets above NOK 1.7m. In November, the government raised the state rate to 0.4% for assets above NOK 20m for individuals, and NOK 40m couples, taking the maximum wealth tax rate to 1.1%.” I may have been a bit facetious with my “soak the rich” comment before – the total tax increase is quite small in percentage terms, and certainly smaller than the kinds of wealth taxes proposed by Elizabeth Warren. The Laffer Curve is worth reviewing here. The basic phenomenon of the Laffer Curve is uncontroversial among economists – the controversy about the Laffer Curve is not whether it is real, but where it peaks. But the question of where the Laffer Curve peaks is itself an oversimplification. The short-run Laffer Curve will look different from the long-run Laffer Curve. The additional tax revenue collected in the long run from increased tax rates will be smaller than what is gathered in the short run, because it takes time for people to adjust their behavior in ways to offset the increased taxes. But technology is making the short run very short indeed. Advances in technology and the rise of remote work are making it easier and easier for people to relocate to new environments with less burdensome taxes and regulations. As Røkke says, “For those close to the company and to me, I am just a click away.” (0 COMMENTS)

Imagine a town called Learnerville. Within Learnerville there is a building. All the windows are boarded, and all the doors are locked. The building is guarded by armed officers. Inside, there are copies of all the books in the Learnerville world. Inside of those books, just as in our own reality, there is knowledge. No one is allowed to go inside the building, and technically no one in Learnerville is allowed to produce, own, read, or trade books. The situation is not all so bad. Books aren’t that complicated to make, and they are pretty easy to hide and smuggle. So, a lot of Learnervillians still possess and enjoy books nonetheless. Some might even say that certain books are ubiquitous despite their prohibition… certainly not all books. Others are almost impossible to find, and many of those that can be found are only accessible at extreme costs. Hence, the same legal authorities that patrol the building have taken aggressive efforts to forestall the production and distribution of books. Vehicles, guns, a vast variety of equipment and armor are all routinely deployed to seek out, confiscate and eradicate books. Those who produce, possess, read or share books are often tried and punished. Throughout Learnerville live a wide variety of people. Different Learnervillians like books to different degrees, and some residents prefer certain books over others. Some are immensely happy and successful despite their limited access to books. Other Learnervillians seriously struggle and endure lives of significant hardship and suffering. In Learnerville, there is a well-known and well-understood relationship between some of the locked away books and some of the struggles endured. Knowledge works like magic, but perhaps slow and indirectly. Some books can dull pain while others can cure diseases. Some books can inspire motivation and passion in the listless. Some books can even transport the reader to seemingly alternate realities filled with indescribable fantasy. Hence, many of the problems that Learnervillians endure can be fully resolved, and others made at least a little bit better… if only Learners could study and glean the knowledge contained in certain books. The saddest and most horrific feature of this story is that most Learnervillians are complicit to their constriction. I am thankful to live in a relatively free society far afield from Learnerville, wherein the default reaction to the prohibition of books is disgust. From Zamayatin to Orwell to Huxley and many others since and in between, the prohibition and regulation of knowledge, human communication and free expression is viewed as the archetypal feature of dystopia. This consensus about the banning of books, monitored behaviors and policed speech sustains despite a similarly common understanding that not all books are good. Lots of books contain horrible ideas. In the wrong hands many can be dangerous. And yet, most reasonable people today recognize and fully accept the obvious truism that the overall effects of books are positive. We shouldn’t ban books! Not because they are without risks, but because their potential benefits obviously exceed their potential costs.   Daniel J. D’Amico is the Director of the Stephenson Institute for Classical Liberalism and an Affiliated Associate Professor of economics at Wabash College. (0 COMMENTS)

On Saturday evening, a Liberty Fund colloquium on the Austrian and Chicago schools of thought ended. One of the pleasures I got from doing the readings was reading sections of Friedrich Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. I had read it over 50 years ago from cover to cover but had read only sections of it since then. So it felt as if I were reading it for the first time. Here are two of my favorite passages: This denial of responsibility is, however, commonly due to a fear of responsibility, a fear that necessarily becomes also a fear of freedom. It is doubtless because the opportunity to build one’s own life also means an unceasing task, a discipline that man must impose upon himself if he is to achieve his aims, that many people are afraid of liberty. [p. 72] I agree with this thought but my pleasure wasn’t from that. It was from seeing Hayek talking about people building their lives. I had posted on this term only a few months ago and had had no idea that Hayek had used it. If we allow men freedom because we presume them to be reasonable beings, we must also make it worth their while to act as reasonable beings by letting them bear the consequences of their decisions. This does not mean that a man [DRH edit: “person”] will always be assumed to be the best judge of his interests; it means merely that we can never be sure who knows them better than he and that we wish to make full use of the capacities o all those who may have something to contribute to the common effort of making our environment serve human purposes. [bold added] It’s the part that’s bold that I like so much. I’ve never been totally convinced that each person is the best judge of his or her own interests; it’s just that how would we know who would be a better judge?       (0 COMMENTS)