Sheldon Richman

Arkansas

Editor and Writer at Freelance

Father, grandfather, lover of liberty, justice, and reason. Freelance editor. Author, What Social Animals Owe to Each Other

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Articles

TGIF: On the Importance of Undesigned Order

6 days ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian approach to economics, was not the first or last thinker to see similarities between a society and a living organism, suggesting the existence of undesigned, spontaneous order. The names Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, before Menger, and Herbert Spencer and F. A. Hayek, after Menger, come to mind.
TGIF: On Value and Freedom

1 week ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

To live is to act. To act is to choose. To choose is to prefer. To prefer is to pursue values—that is, to value. That’s logic-guided observation. Ego sum, ergo aestimo: I am, therefore I value. (HT: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Ludwig von Mises.)Next: to think is to act.
The "Ought" World

2 weeks ago | sheldonrichman.substack.com | Sheldon Richman

To live is to act (because life is conditional). To act is to choose. To choose is to prefer. To prefer is to value or to pursue values. (Being fallible, we can err in thinking something is good when it is in fact bad.)To think is to act. Therefore, to think is to value. (James Ellias of Inductica calls this the "value axiom.")Whether we like it or not, we're immersed in the "ought" world. Hume et al. were wrong.
Paine on War | The Libertarian Institute

2 weeks ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

“It may with reason be said, that in the manner the English nation is represented, it signifies not where this right resides, whether in the Crown, or in the Parliament. War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home: the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditures.
TGIF: More on Menger and Value

2 weeks ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

Consumer goods are also called finished goods. The products we buy at the supermarket and other retail stores have, in less finished form, passed through many stages (including distribution), reaching back to the original factors of production: land and labor. Land includes anything nature-given and not produced.
The Public-School Chickens Come Home Again

3 weeks ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

In Mahmoud v. Maryland, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether parents of children in government schools have a constitutional right to opt out of programs that “expose” their kids to LGBTQ materials. Once again, the chickens have come home to roost. By that, I mean that if politicians, bureaucrats, and elected boards did not run schools and force (tax) parents and nonparents to finance them, this problem could not arise.
TGIF: Menger on Trade

3 weeks ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

Even when a line on a map separates two individuals, trade is still trade—that is, mutually beneficial cooperation. Whether the line separates towns, cities, counties, states, or countries, it does not matter. The transactions are win-win. We could do quite well without the categories of exports and imports.
The Goal Is Freedom: Made Everywhere

1 month ago | fee.org | Sheldon Richman

by Sheldon Richman is the editor of The Freeman and In brief. The Commerce Department (whose idea was that?) said last week that 2006 was another record year for the U.S. trade deficit. The value of imports beat the value of exports by $764 billion. That makes five record years in a row. China's trade surplus with us hit $233 billion. Ordinarily, I would ignore this nonstory because, as Adam Smith wisely said, Nothing . . . can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade.
TGIF: The Objectively Invaluable Menger

1 month ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

Many people are uneasy with the free market. I think that’s because they subscribe, implicitly if not explicitly, to the labor theory of value. Workers, people lament, seem not to reap the full and just reward for their labors. Belief in the labor theory puts adherents in good company. Adam Smith and his successor, David Ricardo, were labor theorists. Fédéric Bastiat held a variant of the labor theory.
TGIF: The Great Carl Menger

1 month ago | libertarianinstitute.org | Sheldon Richman

There can be no doubt among competent historians that if … the Austrian School has occupied an almost unique position in the development of economic science, this is entirely due to the foundations laid by this one man…. [I]ts fundamental ideas belong fully and wholly to [?]…. [W]hat is common to the members of the Austrian School, what constitutes their peculiarity and provided the foundations for their later contributions is their acceptance of the teaching of [?]. —F. A.