If conservationists truly want to protect the pangolin, they’ll need to acknowledge the incentives of the humans that threaten them, and create policies which address them.
To answer this question we must first learn the distinction between contemporary conceptions of freedom and “The Freedom of the Ancients.”
Rather than invent new human rights, people who are concerned about poverty should first ask what kind of barriers government creates that prevent social mobility. Those barriers should all be removed before any thought is given to taxing some people in order to give money or resources to others.
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” — Milton Friedman
There are two problems with an estate tax: 1. The belief that estates should be taxed at all reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, and 2. The actual taxing of estates has very different effects than those that advocates imagine it will have.
In this seventh installment in his series on religious liberty, Prof. Mark Hall explains how legislators have carved out exemptions to the Controlled Substances Act to protect religious ceremonies involving controlled substances.
The really radical idea behind the rule of law is that the lawmakers themselves are not above the law. It is “the law” that rules, not those who make and enforce the law.
Is national defense a “public good?” Professor Chris Coyne outlines what it means to be a public good and raises the question of whether we should privatize our National Defense/National Security in America or leave it to the government.
“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” – Alexis de Tocqueville
What is it about well intentioned, well-funded, state led, humanitarian aid programs that makes them fail so miserably? The truth is, humanitarian aid intended to alleviate suffering often fails, and in many cases causes additional harm to those who are already suffering. In the first 8 months after Hurricane Katrina, billions of dollars were wasted, […]
Was the Iraq war worth it? The U.S went into Iraq under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction, but another reason was the effort to show Iraqis the power of freedom… to make Iraq safe for democracy. 100,000 civilian casualties and 800 billion dollars later it’s hard to argue that Iraq is better off […]
Professor Mark Hall catalogues a history of accommodating religious objections to military service in this third installment to his series on religious liberty.
Does foreign intervention do more harm than good? It’s hard to look at suffering in developing nations and stomach much of the poverty that exists in the world. Naturally, we all want to help, but to help requires a knowledge that people in a given community have gained over time. Based on experiences, habits and […]
A lack of basic police accountability foments distrust within communities, especially communities of color, turning the social contract on its head.
Do the benefits of foreign intervention outweigh the costs? Foreign intervention is a source of much disagreement among those who believe in a limited government. If the role of government is to keep us safe, is intervening internationally necessary to do so? Professor Chris Coyne of George Mason University explains. Learn more: http://hayekandchill.com/foreign-policy/
John Locke’s most important ideas, for your list-reading pleasure.
In this second installment to the series on religious freedom, Professor Mark Hall explains a third way to protecting both religious liberty and the public interest.
Impinging on religious liberty rarely, if ever, benefits the commons good, as Professor Mark Hall explains in this first installment in a series on religious liberty.
Many people are shocked that Hillary Clinton’s “extreme carelessness” has not been prosecuted for “gross negligence.” It’s led a lot of commentators to conclude that there is one set of rules for the political elites and another set of rules for everyone else. A spate of high-profile police shootings in which black men and women […]
The connection between classical liberalism and sport is not immediately obvious. Sport, after all, is a near-universal human activity that long predates classical liberalism. Its practitioners and spectators come from all creeds and political ideologies. That is one of the enduring strengths and attractions of sport at its best: it is not the provenance of […]
Pundits like to talk about foreign and domestic policy as if they are completely separate concerns. But as University of Tampa professor Abby Hall has been explaining in Learn Liberty’s six part series on foreign policy, there is not as much distinction between them as people often think. In fact, foreign policy often boomerangs back […]
Over twenty years ago, I published an article that argued that the rule of law was not only a myth, but an extremely dangerous one that causes people “to be willing not only to relinquish a large measure of [their] own freedom, but to enthusiastically support the state in the suppression of others’ freedom as […]
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared at the Washington Post. The author, Emily Ekins, will be joining Learn Liberty on Facebook Live this upcoming Thursday the the 30th at 3pm to talk about this and other election issues. Millennials are the only age group in America in which a majority views socialism favorably. A national […]
After the terror attack in Orlando, is there anything the US government can do to protect us? In this video, Don Boudreaux looks at the presidential candidates’ stances on combating terrorism. Trump promises to directly target the families of terrorists. And his plan for ISIS is to “bomb the $@!# out of them.” But other […]