Independent Review articles from June 2000

Independent Review archives from June 2000

Should We Let Banks Create Money?
June 22, 2000... You've heard the joke before: If you laid all of the world's economists end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. Side-splitting, isn't it? In truth, we economists do reach conclusions, and we agree with one another more often than...

Does Modernization Require Westernization?
June 22, 2000... For the purposes of this essay, three types of liberty need to be distinguished: political, civil, and economic. Although it has become common, especially in America, to conflate the three, F. A. Hayek, among others, clearly distinguished them....

Assessing the FDA via the Anomaly of Off-Label Drug Prescribing.
June 22, 2000... It is commonly thought that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the use of all pharmaceutical drugs in the United States. In fact, most hospital patients are given drugs that are not FDA-approved for the prescribed use. The...

Privatizing Social Security the Right Way.
June 22, 2000... The U.S. Social Security System desperately needs reform. The system faces a long-term fiscal crisis roughly twice as bad as what the government is publicly admitting. Continuing to pay Social Security benefits according to present rules would...

The Environmental Propaganda Agency.(Statistical Data Included)
June 22, 2000... In 1990 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published Environmental Investments: The Cost of a Clean Environment. That work became the most widely cited source of compliance-cost data used in studies reported in economic journals. An...

Dimensions of the Shadow Economy.(Statistical Data Included)
June 22, 2000... Shadow economic activities--employment, production, and exchange unreported to government authorities--constitute a large and growing part of all economic activity throughout the world. Although these activities, by their very nature, cannot be...

Banks Cannot Create Money.
June 22, 2000... On some monetary issues, virtually all present-day Austrian economists agree. Central banks and their specific product, fiat paper money, are inflationary institutions that disrupt the economy and serve no other purpose but redistributing...

The Soul of Classical Liberalism.
June 22, 2000... ... the bizarre fact that alone among the great political currents, liberalism has no ideology. Anthony de Jasay During the ideologically dark days of the 1950s, my colleague Warren Nutter often referred to "saving the books" as the...

Economics with Romance.
June 22, 2000... In the preceding article, "The Soul of Classical Liberalism," James M. Buchanan argues that classical liberals should articulate a vision of freedom and spontaneous order as emotionally animating as the vision proffered by the advocates of...

The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan. Volume 1, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty.(Review)
June 22, 2000... * The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan. Volume 1, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty Edited by Geoffrey Brennan, Hartmut Kliemt, and Robert D. Tollison Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999. Pp. xxiv, 522. $20.00 cloth,...

The Moral Economy.(Review)
June 22, 2000... * The Moral Economy By John P. Powelson Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Pp. 282. $32.50 cloth. The life of an economist living in Seattle in the autumn of 1999 was an interesting one. The scheduled meeting of the...

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.(Review)
June 22, 2000... * Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed By James C. Scott New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Pp. xiv, 460. $35.00 cloth. James Scott is an anthropologist and political scientist....

Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy.(Review)
June 22, 2000... * Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy By George J. Borjas Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. 263. $27.95 cloth. George J. Borjas, the author of Heaven's Door, belongs to a small but influential...

John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty.(Review)
June 22, 2000... * John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty By C. Bradley Thompson Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. Pp. xix, 340. $39.95 cloth. John Adams's expectations have been fulfilled: his reputation is dwarfed by that of his...

The State and Freedom of Contract.(Review)
June 22, 2000... * The State and Freedom of Contract Edited by Harry N. Scheiber Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Pp. vi, 378. $55.00 cloth. Because contracts are at the heart of a free-market economy, it is not surprising that...

Results of a Fifty-Year Experiment in Political Economy.(Statistical Data Included)
June 22, 2000... North Korea Population (millions) 21 Life expectancy at birth (years) Males 49 Females ...

IN MEMORIAM.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2000... Paul Heyne, 1931-2000 After an illness that ran its course from diagnosis to death in just two months, Paul Heyne succumbed to cancer on March 9, 2000. A gifted and dedicated teacher of economics, Heyne taught at Valparaiso University...