Frank Wilhoit’s definition of conservatism (about which much more below) was not, as you would expect from something so incisive and widely quoted, formulated years ago in a scholarly book or article. It appeared only six years ago, in a lengthy comment by Wilhoit (a composer and music theorist), under a blog post by Henry…

Billy Binion  (“Juneteenth is a Celebration of Freedom,” Reason, June 19) writes that, despite widespread right-wing aversion to Juneteenth as a holiday, the GOP “in some sense still fashions itself as the party of freedom.” Matt Yglesias is most famous these days for his almost daily garbage takes; but years ago, back when the Republican…

I find fodder for op-eds in some of the strangest places. I came across this video (“Politics is NOT a zero-sum game,” by Shai Davidai) in a HIT posted on Amazon Mechanical Turk by Davidai — an academic study in which he gauged viewers’ reactions to it. (For those who don’t know, Mechanical Turk is…

In a column four years ago, I recounted the experience of a friend in academia with the godawful “learning management software” which her institution required for designing exams. She complained that she was trying to create a midterm exam and “blackboard is complete fucking garbage. No intuitive way to break up questions into sections, can’t…

…what do you get? Answer: “Special Little Freedom Zones.” That’s what Reason’s Liz Wolfe calls the Honduran “charter cities,” officially known as ZEDEs  (Zones for Economic Development and Employment), which were declared illegal in September by the Honduran Supreme Court (“No More Special Little Freedom Zones,” September 25). The ruling prohibits the creation of new…

For more years than most of us have been alive, by-the-numbers “minimum wage increases cause unemployment” puff pieces have been an almost daily staple at right-libertarian propaganda sites like Foundation for Economic Education. As I remark every time I see one — more than once in written commentary — these people demonstrate a lack of…

At Foundation for Economic Education, Preston Brashers — commenting on a statement by Bernie Sanders that this country can’t afford a billionaire class which is at war with working families — replied (“What the Socialist Left Fails to Grasp about Wealth and Innovation in America,” June 28):  But when you consider the vital economic activities…

Some time ago, in a Facebook argument, I encountered someone who repeated the old “exchange of unequals” argument (i.e., that people never exchange equivalents because each party values what they got more than what they traded for it). I responded that this argument confuses exchange value with use value and that, regardless of subjective valuation,…

If there’s one leitmotif in Jacob Hornberger’s commentary at the Future of Freedom Foundation over the years, it’s that unlimited accumulation of capital by the super-rich is the pathway to prosperity. That musical phrase received its latest tinny, tinkling iteration in “The Importance of Capital” (March 13): I was recently walking through a construction site…

At Foundation for Economic Education (“The Ego vs. the Machine,” February 24), self-described “techno-optimist” Dylan Allman dismisses recent controversies over AI as a simple matter of wounded egos. “They feel, on some instinctual level, that if machines can do what they do — only better, faster, and more efficiently — then what value do they…

In a column four years ago, I recounted the experience of a friend in academia with the godawful “learning management software” which her institution required for designing exams. She complained  that she was trying to create a midterm exam and “blackboard is complete fucking garbage. No intuitive way to break up questions into sections, can’t…

At Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown (“Feds Make a Pharma Patent Grab”) gives new meaning to the term “grab.” Most people would consider a state-granted monopoly on the right to produce something to be in itself a grab. But not Brown.  The Biden administration recently invoked the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, in claiming the right to…

In the previous installment of this column, I discussed Walter Block’s repeated defense of “voluntary slavery contracts” as one example of his long record of defending economic phenomena as “voluntary,” regardless of the role of background or systemic violence in making them possible. But it didn’t stop there. Consider his defenses, just within the past…

Randy Barnett is arguably on the short list of the libertarians most influential in American public life. His legal scholarship has informed challenges to state power in the courts; indeed, he himself has argued before the Supreme Court. He has been an active participant in intra-libertarian theoretical debates for decades. And his book The Structure of…

In one sense, Walter Block is very much in the tradition of right-libertarian and anarcho-capitalist polemics, insofar as he hides power relationships and coercive institutions behind a facade of “free exchange” and “voluntary contract.” In another, however, he is much worse. Anarcho-capitalists, traditionally, have focused on convincing the average person that a stateless regime centered…

Recently there has been much fear surrounding the legalization of child labor in many states, but could legalizing child labor actually be a good thing? After all, the labor movement fought long and hard to ban child labor to protect children from exploitation. But some youth liberationists are challenging this perspective. According to NPR: In…

There’s a certain kind of right-wing culture warrior — a disproportionate number of whom call themselves “libertarians” — who seems to be confused about what an actual “free marketplace of ideas” is. Self-described “free speech absolutists” of this sort never stop avowing their fondness for John Stuart Mill, and proclaiming their belief that “the cure…

At Reason, Christian Britschgi (“Do Not Under Any Circumstances Nationalize Greyhound”) celebrates America’s “extensive network of private, for-profit (and profitable) intercity bus services primarily serving lower-income people” as “a great example of how the free market can provide an essential service without public subsidies.” There are a lot of questionable, or outright ahistorical, assumptions implicit…

The Freeman is back to its “best available option” defense of sweatshops and child labor (“What Many Critics of Child Labor Overlook”).  It treats public outrage over the presence of child labor in the supply chains of Western corporations as a demonstration of “how economic illiteracy has seeped into the minds of Western media and…

At The Freeman, Cody Cook asks “Was Jesus a Friend to Big Business?” He begins by quoting several of the many prima facie condemnations of the wealthy in the Gospels, and notes their troubling implications for the sort of libertarianism (pro-wealthy, pro-business, and pro-big business) both he and The Freeman represent. With such strong statements…