Independent Review articles from January 1998

Independent Review archives from January 1998

Crime control through private enterprise.
January 1, 1998... Israel Kirzner (1997, 62) explains that entrepreneurial discovery of opportunities gradually and systematically pushes back the boundaries of ignorance, thereby driving down costs and prices while increasing both the quantity and the quality...

Medicare's progeny: the 1996 health care legislation.
January 1, 1998... On August 1 and 2, 1996, Congress cleared for the president's signature the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, known in the press as the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. There was little dissent: the House vote approving the...

On the nature of civil society.
January 1, 1998... The collapse of the Soviet Empire and the efforts made in Central and Eastern European countries to construct or reconstruct civil society as the salvation of their nations have inspired Western intellectuals to reconsider the concept of civil...

Benjamin Tucker, Liberty, and individualist anarchism.
January 1, 1998... "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these three; but the greatest of these is Liberty. Formerly the price of Liberty was eternal vigilance, but now it can be had for fifty cents a year." So wrote Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854-1939) on the first...

Death by Government.
January 1, 1998... R. J. Rummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, has justifiably acquired a reputation as an outstanding scholar of violence perpetrated by the political state. His book Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.:...

The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism.
January 1, 1998... By Michael Oakeshott. Edited by Timothy Fuller New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. xx, 139. $25.00 cloth. Without doubt one of the twentieth-century's most important political philosophers as well as a masterful stylist of...

Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System.
January 1, 1998... Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. viii, 223. $24.95 cloth. A major theme of Barry Eichengreen's accessible history of the international monetary system since 1850 is that pegged exchange rates are viable when governments arc...

The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law.
January 1, 1998... By Charles F. Hobson Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Pp. xv, 256. $35.00 Scholars have long agreed that John Marshall occupies a preeminent place in the growth of American constitutionalism. Marshall contributed significantly to...

John Marshall: Definer of a Nation.
January 1, 1998... By Jean Edward Smith New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1996. Pp. xi, 736. $35.00 Scholars have long agreed that John Marshall occupies a preeminent place in the growth of American constitutionalism. Marshall contributed significantly to...

The Life of Herbert Hoover, vol. 3, Master of Emergencies, 1917-1918.
January 1, 1998... This volume, covering the period of American belligerency, examines Herbert Hoover's activities as he headed the United States Food Administration while continuing to oversee the Commission for Relief in Belgium. As in the earlier parts of this...

Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies Toward Small Business, 1936-1961.
January 1, 1998... By Jonathan J. Bean Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Pp. xiv, 281. $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper. The week of June 2 to 6, 1997, was designated National Small Business Week. One newspaper article noted that 96 percent of all...

Drug Policy and the Decline of American Cities.
January 1, 1998... By Sam Staley New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1992. Pp. 257. $39.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. In Drug Policy and the Decline of American Cities, Sam Staley considers many of the issues at stake in the debate over drug legalization....

Dismantling the Welfare State? Regan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment.
January 1, 1998... By Paul Pierson Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. viii, 213. $54.95. In 1935 the political scientist E. E. Schattschneider observed that "new policies create a new politics" (Politics, Pressures and the Tariff. New...

Puritanism, paternalism, and power.
January 1, 1998... "Live and let live" would appear to be a simple, sensible guide to social life, but obviously many Americans reject this creed with a vengeance. They find toleration so unpleasant that they support the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of...