Richard M. Ebeling

Socialism, Like Dracula, Rises Again From the Grave

How very appealing was the socialist idea in the late 19th and early (pre-WWI) 20th centuries! All the burdens of life and everyday work, all the seemingly unjust inequalities of material wealth observable in society, and all the uncertainties of health care and old age would be lifted from the weary shoulders of the common man with the arrival of socialism.
 

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The Beautiful Philosophy of Liberalism

There has been a great paradox in the modern world. On the one hand, freedom and prosperity have replaced tyranny and poverty for tens, indeed for hundreds of millions of people around the world over the last two centuries. Yet the political and economic system that historically has made this possible has been criticized and condemned. That political and economic system is liberalism.

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When “Democracy” Becomes a Threat to Liberty

Friends of freedom, including many of those who strongly believed in and fought for representative and democratically elected government in the 18th and 19th centuries, often expressed fearful concerns that “democracy” could, itself, become a threat to the liberty of many of the very people that democratic government was supposed to protect from political abuse.

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Tariff Wars and the Fallacy of the Balance of Trade

The hoopla and hysteria about balance of trade deficits, and that somehow “others” are taking advantage of us because we buy more from them than they buy from us, in fact, is the result of an analytical myopia of failing to “follow the money” through all the different forms and channels that import and export spending can take, both for an individual or the country as a whole. Once you do, you realize that the balance of trade “problem” is all an illusion.

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