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1 month ago | 
econlib.org | Pierre Lemieux |Kevin Corcoran |Janet Bufton
In his essay “Of the Independency of Parliament” (first published c. 1741), David Hume defends the Enlightenment idea that constitutions should assume that individuals, including politicians, are self-interested and that rulers will try to abuse their power. A famous passage reads:In constraining any system of government and fixing the several checks and controuls of the constitution, each man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all of his actions, than private interest.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
econlib.org | Pierre Lemieux |Scott Sumner |Janet Bufton
Two American-born citizens with military experience, one a veteran, the other a current soldier, committed public mayhem at the beginning of the new year: veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar in New Orleans and decorated Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger in Las Vegas—the former case being much more destructive and lethal. Both events raise troubling questions about what caused these individuals to act as they did (from what we know). The causes are likely complex.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
econlib.org | Scott Sumner |Janet Bufton |David Henderson
As I get older, I increasingly feel like this isn’t the country I grew up in. The most dramatic recent changes have been in the area of politics, where the system is becoming almost unrecognizable to those of us who were born in the mid-20th century. Here’s Bloomberg:
The coalition between Clegg and Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta Platforms Inc., proved far more successful, though it, too, is coming to an end, Clegg announced on Thursday.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
econlib.org | Janet Bufton |David Henderson |Scott Sumner
In Part 1, I wrote about Don Lavoie’s argument that robust liberalism requires open (democratic) politics that can make useful the tacit, dispersed knowledge of voters’ “interests, concerns, and demands to provide governance structures that people will use to resolve political disagreements peacefully.” Liberalism requires open democracy just as it requires open markets, for many of the same reasons. It would be hard to find a better place to go next than Kevin J.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Janet Bufton
A Book Review of Democracy for Busy People, by Kevin J. Elliott. Kevin J. Elliott’s 2023 book, Democracy for Busy People, is for anyone interested in liberal democratic politics. The book is worthwhile for classical liberals in particular because it handles topics often passed over by classically liberal democratic commentators and takes opportunity cost seriously. The introduction begins by explaining “busyness” and its relevance to democratic politics.
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Nov 23, 2024 | 
econlib.org | David Henderson |Scott Sumner |Janet Bufton
“Trump’s Oil and Gas Donor Don’t Really Want to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’“. That’s the headline in a Wall Street Journal news story on November 22 about how U.S. oil and natural gas producers think about energy policy. That headline is not completely misleading because the story goes on to say that oil and gas producers are nervous about too much oil being produced–for the obvious reason that it would bring down prices. Competitors rarely like competition. But here’s what is misleading: the subhead.
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Nov 23, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Scott Sumner |Janet Bufton |Pierre Lemieux
On August 2020, Fed officials announced a new approach to monetary policy, which they called “Flexible Average Inflation Targeting”. The idea was to allow some variation in inflation in the short run, but aim for an average inflation rate of 2% in the mid- to longer run. What they actually did was something radically different. In 2021, the Fed adopted a 1960s-style highly stimulative monetary policy in an attempt to “create jobs” by printing money.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
econlib.org | Janet Bufton |Pierre Lemieux
A recent virtual reading group explored “what ifs” around the Reconstruction period. One avenue we explored was whether monetary compensation could have prevented the U.S. Civil War. The British compensated slaveholders in 1837 after the 1833 abolition of slavery. In 1862 the United States paid loyal slaveholders $300 per enslaved person freed as compensation for abolition in the District of Columbia. In both cases, slavery was abolished without bloodshed. That “What if?” still looms large.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
liberalcurrents.com | Adam Gurri |Samantha Hancox-Li |Janet Bufton |Paul Crider
We have forgotten feudalism. We think of lords and gentry in the same way we think of knights and castles. Feudalism is little more than a fantastical setting for our imagination. Sometimes there are dragons. It isn’t an organizing analogy we use in our lives or in our politics. If we want nostalgia, we reach for the imagined America of the 1950s, or perhaps the settling of the wild west.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
liberalcurrents.com | Samantha Hancox-Li |Janet Bufton |Jacob Grier |Adam Gurri
The liberal ideal is that we ought always to be striving for an open society; a society that is “open to ideas,” “open to people,” and “open to change.” In an open society, if you hate your boss or your job, you can quit. If you hate where you live, you can move somewhere else. Artists do not need to fear offending either the church or the party. Citizens can criticize or even insult political leaders without fearing reprisal. Subcommunities can experiment with different lifestyles freely.
