Independent Review articles from September 2002

Independent Review archives from September 2002

The secret of worldwide drug prohibition: the varieties and uses of drug prohibition.
September 22, 2002... What percentage of countries in the world have drug prohibition? Is it 100 percent, 75 percent, 50 percent, or 25 percent? I recently asked many people I know to guess the answer to this question. Most people in the United States, especially...

Does annual real gross domestic product per capita overstate or understate the growth of individual welfare over the past two centuries?
September 22, 2002... The decrease in the death rate, and the attendant increase in life expectancy--more than doubling--during the last two centuries in the richer countries, and in the twentieth century in the poorer countries, is [sic] the most stupendous feat in...

Globalization and the poor.
September 22, 2002... The economic crises in Asia, Russia, and Latin America in recent years serve as a reminder that nothing is inevitable about the process of globalization. In a number of countries, liberalism has suffered a setback, temporary or not. Even so,...

Public opinion and campaign finance: reformers reality.
September 22, 2002... In the 2000 race for the presidency, Arizona senator John McCain promoted campaign finance reform as a partial remedy for widespread citizen cynicism toward politics. On the Democratic side, Al Gore promised in his acceptance speech for the...

Hong Kong's CyberPort: do government and high tech mix?
September 22, 2002... Do you see a man who considers himself wise? There is more hope for a fool than for him. --Proverbs 26:12 About three and a half years ago, Hong Kong's CyberPort was launched with great fanfare and high expectations. It was to be a...

Battling for control of health care resources.
September 22, 2002... An extraordinary upheaval in the health care sector has occurred during the past two decades. Skyrocketing increases in expenditures, which had become evident in the mid-1960s, gave way to a parade of attempts to rein in costs, ranging from...

John Stuart Mill and the liberty of inebriation.
September 22, 2002... As an important nineteenth or twentieth century work on political and social theory, John Smart Mill's essay On Liberty ([1859] 1975) is considered to be second only to the Communist Manifesto. Written in the midst of the growing political...

My time with Soviet economics. (Memoir & Critique).
September 22, 2002... The academic study of the Soviet economy was unsuccessful. Several widely held misconceptions contributed to the lack of success. Western economists assumed that economic growth was assured because the central planning authority controlled the...

Why conservatives and libertarians should support school vouchers. (Controversy).
September 22, 2002... Conservatives and libertarians generally approve of returning the production of goods and services to the private sector. Why, then, do some conservatives and libertarians oppose school vouchers? School vouchers are certificates or chits...

Giving credit where it's due: why tax credits are better than vouchers. (Controversy).
September 22, 2002... In his article "Why Conservatives and Libertarians Should Support School Vouchers," Joseph Bast argues that these groups should do so because vouchers are consistent with their political views. The wisdom of that recommendation is questionable,...

The Riddle of the Modern World: of Liberty, Wealth, and Equality.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... By Alan Macfarlane Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 2000. Pp. xiii, 326. $65.00 cloth, $21.95 paper. Alan Macfarlane is the author of a marvelous book, The Origins of English Individualism: The Family, Property, and Social Transition...

Harmonizing Sentiments: the Declaration of Independence and the Jeffersonian Idea of Self-Government.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... By Hans L. Eicholz New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Pp. ix, 245. $25.95 paper. Thomas Jefferson may well be the only president who promised to do less than his predecessors. What America needed, he said at his inauguration, was "a wise and...

Holding Health Care Accountable: Law and the New Medical Marketplace.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... By E. Haavi Morreim New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 320. $49.95 cloth. The practice of medicine makes a fundamental distinction between diagnosis and treatment. Unless the former is done, the latter cannot be accomplished....

Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... By Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. 464. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper. In Drug War Heresies, Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter ask whether drug prohibition makes sense and whether...

The Precautionary Principle: a Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... By Indur Goklany Washington D.C.: Cato Institute, 2001. Pp. 119. $17.95 paper. In politics, special-interest groups would love to have a regulatory trump card to play in order to ensure that their priority defeats everyone else's. Radical...

The Transfer Society: Economic Expenditures on Transfer Activity .(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... By David N. Laband and George McClintock Washington, D.C.: National Book Network and Cato Institute, 2001. Pp. 100. $19.95 cloth, $8.95 paper. From advertising descriptions of this small book (eighty-three pages of text) by David Laband...

How to Be Human Though an Economist.(Book Review)
September 22, 2002... By Deirdre McCloskey Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Pp. 287. $65.00 cloth, $17.95 paper. Most of the essays in How to Be Human Though an Economist were published originally in Deirdre McCloskey's regular column in the...

Government protects us? (Etceteras ...).
September 22, 2002... When I was younger and even more ignorant than I am today, I believed that government (understood conventionally as a monopoly of legitimate coercive force in a given territory) performs an essential function--namely, the protection of...