Did Adam Smith—celebrated hero of free trade—make a big exception for reasons of national defense? Would he support the Jones ...

Caleb Petitt is a Research Associate for the Independent Institute, where he researches historical political economy, history of economic thought, and trade. He holds a PhD in economics from George ...

Use of the phrase “moral science” has increased in the past century. 1 The phrase has been used to describe the discipline of economics, notably by Kenneth Boulding in his 1968 presidential address ...

Virtually everywhere and always throughout human history, economic growth was nonexistent. While pockets of momentary economic progress took place in certain instances, the overall trend was one of ...

Crypto- anarchism is a philosophy whose advocates think technology can assist them in creating communities based on consent rather than coercion. Crypto- anarchists wish to be free from state ...

The socialist calculation debate revolves around the question of whether central planners can, at least in principle, make the economic calculations necessary to achieve the rational, efficient ...

Born in England while Puritans were persecuted, Williams hopped aboard a ship to America in an attempt to find a place where freedom of religion was a guaranteed right. Unable to find a home free of ...

By 1776 they were no longer merely at the brink of revolution. Shots had been fired at both Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts and the colonial militias had fought a major engagement with the ...

Today Cicero is often read only by classical scholars and reluctant students, which is a great shame because his life and philosophy reflect a sort of proto- liberalism that came to influence a wide ...

Retributive punishment refers to punishment for a crime that is carried out for retributive reasons and is justified if there really are good retributive reasons for punishing crime. To get a clear ...

The idea of providing everyone with a basic income has evolved over the last half- century from a pipe dream into a serious proposal with broad, cross- ideological support. However, only some ...

Mutualism, as a particular strain of anarchist thought, develops from a search for equilibrium, for the spontaneous balance of economic forces. 1 At its most basic, mutualism is an ethical principle ...