The Unbroken Window

One of my bright students asked me a question that roughly goes like this: “What is the true definition of compulsory?”
What could he possibly mean by that? Isn’t it obvious? Perhaps not. Consider two strategies a government can use to deal with a situation where lots of customers want to use a resource, but there [...]

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The states are also eroding the tradition of respect for private property, just like their Uncle Sam has been doing for centuries. This Mitchell Ditch case in Montana just came to my attention:
The Montana Supreme Court ruled here recently that the 16-mile-long stream, Mitchell Slough, is open to the public and that the landowners are [...]

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So you think the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act guarantee that the air and water are cleaned?
One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation’s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During [...]

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I wrote this for Thanksgiving last year. Didn’t get around to a new article for this year, but I hope you can enjoy this “reprint.”
Four centuries after the celebration of the first Thanksgiving, there is still widespread disagreement about the reason for the Pilgrims’ feast. But whether it was a harvest festival, a strictly religious [...]

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To Those Who Condemn Liberty, I’d remind you that the American founding, whatever its ugly warts and inconsistencies, was essentially a libertarian founding.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it [...]

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I am rereading Hernando DeSoto’s Mystery of Capital to prepare for a few lectures on property rights I do in my Environmental class. Here is one of my favorite thoughts:
The lack of legal property thus explains why citizens in developing and former communist nations cannot make profitable contracts with strangers, cannot get credit, insurance, or [...]

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If you are not a fan of big, expansive, intrusive and special privilege granting government, you are a racist, a gay-basher, and now an assassin if you dare voice your concern about it.
My favorite passage just smacks of some of the most delightful elitism I have ever seen:
“I wish that we would all, again, curb [...]

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I have been trying to communicate with one of my students who is traveling in Asia right now and this is the response he was able to get through to me:
Professor Rizzo,
I apologize for not replying sooner, and for not signing up for a recitation yet.
I have been in Asia for the last 3 weeks, [...]

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The place has gone mad. Here is a quote from New York City’s assistant commissioner for tobacco control:
it can be effective to display gruesome health effects such as amputations and throat cancer
That is in response to a proposed bill requiring tobacco retailers to post gruesome anti-smoking signs. And this for a product that is voluntarily [...]

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Lately I’ve taken to over-reacting to things by conventional societal standards. Adam Smith recognized that the world was not perfect, and that for any society to work well a great deal of compassion, understanding, sympathy, empathy, patience and tolerance was necessary to be had by all citizens. I tend to agree. But that does not [...]

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