Independent Review articles from January 2002

Independent Review archives from January 2002

Latin American liberalism: a mirage?
January 1, 2002... It is said that Latin America's misfortune is instability. I believe the opposite. "Next to instability," German Arciniegas wrote in 1958, "there at times occurs something worse: stability" (all translations from Spanish-language material are...

"Pay to play" politics examined, with lessons for campaign-finance reform.
January 1, 2002... I don't care if she waddles like a duck And talks with a lisp. I still think I'm in good luck If the dollar bills are crisp... 'Cause if the purse is fat That's where it's at. William Robinson Jr. and Robert...

Germany's "social market economy": between social ethos and rent seeking.
January 1, 2002... The successful reconstruction of the West German economy after World War II and its spectacular rise to the leading position in Europe since then is undisputed. However, the persistently high unemployment rate of the past two decades and the...

What fairness-and-denial research could have told the Florida Supreme Court (and can tell the rest of us).
January 1, 2002... Peron brought us social justice--and ruined the country. --Remark of an Argentine tourist guide, Buenos Aires, 1996 On November 21, 2000, the Florida Supreme Court ordered the resumption of manual vote recounts in selected Florida...

Globalization as framed by the two logics of trade.
January 1, 2002... Economists are professionally biased in favor of free trade and open markets. Indeed, normative support for open markets is so universal among practicing economists that the logical origins of their positions are often obscured. Observers and...

Liberty and democracy as economic systems.
January 1, 2002... Until the twentieth century, economics and politics were studied together the heading of political economy. Two major nineteenth-century treatises on the subject, by David Ricardo (1817) and John Stuart Mill (1848), had the title Principles of...

People and ecosystems in Colombia: casualties of the drug war.
January 1, 2002... Opposition to the "war on drugs" comes from numerous disparate camps, from libertarian scholars to moderate public-health officials to liberal activists for social justice. Concerns expressed by those seeking to change the way this "war" is...

Demand-side bidding will reduce the level and volatility of electricity prices. (Lab Report).
January 1, 2002... With the move to deregulate wholesale electricity prices in the United States, each state or region needed to develop a plan for restructuring its electric-utility industry and to establish the rules of an auction market for determining the...

Violence in the twentieth century: a closer look. (Reflections).
January 1, 2002... Among the many social changes wrought by modern communications, perhaps none is so striking as our newfound ability to learn about and react to violence. In an earlier age, cities, countries, and even civilizations could be swallowed up in...

Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today. (Book Reviews).
January 1, 2002... Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today By Scott Gordon Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 395. $59.95, doth. Scott Gordon's Controlling the State combines under one cover two...

Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism. (Book Reviews).
January 1, 2002... Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism By Chris Matthew Sciabarra University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Pp. xi, 467. $65.00 cloth, $24.50 paper. Since the early nineteenth century, Hegelians of the left...

After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century. (Book Reviews).
January 1, 2002... After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century Edited by Timothy Lynch Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2000. Pp. xi, 193. $18.95 cloth, $9.95 paper. After Prohibition is a disappointing book on at least two...

Only One Place of Redress: African-Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal. (Book Reviews).
January 1, 2002... Only One Place of Redress: African-Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal By David E. Bernstein Durham, N.C.: Duke University. Press, 2001. Pp. xii, 191. $39.95 cloth. The role of nonmarket...

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. (Book Reviews).
January 1, 2002... The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering By Norman G. Finkelstein New York: Verso, 2000. Pp. 150. $23.00 cloth. The suffering of European Jews during the 1930s and 1940s gave rise to a stock of moral...