Young America’s Foundation, the parent organization of Young Americans for Freedom , has released a new survey of young Americans . Apparently they’re for freedom. A large majority don’t want the federal government taking “an active role” in their daily lives, and a smaller majority don’t want it taking “an active role” in the lives of Americans in general—aside, of course, from its “essential functions.”
North Carolina Republicans wouldn't recognize free enterprise even if it ran them over—say, with an electric car! Tesla Motors, maker of the Model S, voted Car of Year by Motor Trend and best car in years by Consumer Reports , sells its cars directly. They sell over the internet, and, where permitted, they set up their own stores and sell the cars through them. This threatens the cozy middle-man system that U.S. car dealers enjoy. So the car dealers are fighting back—not in the capitalist way, but in the crony-capitalist way!
On Tuesday, April 30th, Young Americans for Liberty at The University of Colorado Boulder will be hosting an exciting and unique debate over the moral foundations of political liberty , pitting three distinct perspectives against each other to make the case for why each is right and most helpful in the fight for a free society.
Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek were notable 20th century advocates of capitalism. They were two of the most important theorists of the free society and defenders of the free society. Both of them based their political views, in part, on theories in epistemology. David Kelley discusses the radical difference in their views on a core epistemological issue, the nature of abstractions. Rand held that we form abstractions from the observation of particular, concrete things. Hayek held the opposite view that abstractions are primary; some are innate, some acquired from our cultural environment, but neither can be independently supported by observation of concretes. Kelley shows why Hayek's view is both false and inconsistent with a fully individualist moral and political theory. [This presentation was filmed at the 2010 Free Minds Conference in Alexandria, Virginia.]
In an effort to avoid fines, Google has proposed concessions to its rivals and European antitrust authorities.Reuters describes the concessions in a way that seems natural—but it’s worth considering what these concessions actually mean. I’ve commented on two of them; I invite you to consider the others.
ESkeptic, the email newsletter of the Skeptic Society, today featured a double book review by The Atlas Society’s Edward Hudgins . Under the title “It’s Getting Better All the Time,” Hudgins looks at Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler and Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, by Robert Zubrin.
The U.S. Department of Justice has agreed to stop trying to prevent beer makers AB InBev and Grupo Modelo from merging. The settlement is largely as described in my recent column : on the theory that an independently priced Corona limits the price of InBev products such as Bud Light, DOJ is requiring the merged companies to give up control of Corona in the U.S. market. As part of that arrangement, a brewery just south of the border will be sold to Corona’s new maker, Constellation.
April 2013 -- Atlas Society staff members Ed Hudgins and Alexander R. Cohen have been interviewed by media for their recent articles and Cohen's most recent article was published in several media outlets.
April 16, 2013 -- Suppose you and your colleagues want to be paid more. So you make an agreement not to do any more work unless your pay is increased. If you’re unionized laborers, there’s a federal agency that may look after you. But if you’re lawyers with your own offices, taking court appointments to represent poor criminal defendants, there’s a federal agency that may go after you.
Unlike last time I went to a Senate antitrust hearing , I heard nothing scandalous at today’s. Nothing, except everything. Is it not scandalous to hear a law antithetical to the moral meaning of free enterprise called the “Magna Carta of free enterprise”? To hear a law created to empower the federal government to violate individual rights compared to the Bill of Rights, which was created to restrain the federal government and protect individual rights? Is it not scandalous to hear legislators celebrate a law that coercively controls the terms of voluntary trades to favor a certain side? Even if that side is that of "the consumer"?
Regulators have restricted so much finance-related speech that people in the industry now have to lobby for the freedom to use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn like the rest of us. Or almost like the rest of us.
April 8. 2013 -- Ed Hudgins will be a guest on WAGG 610 radio, a gospel station in Birmingham, Alabama, today at 3:00 PM Eastern.
When businessmen get involved in policy advocacy, they can help promote the freedom to do business. Yet the impression, fostered by some libertarian intellectuals, that business lobbying tends only to produce special favors for politically connected businesses, can discourage honorable businessmen from participating in the fight for their own freedom. So argues Fred L.
RECORDED WEBINAR Economic Power vs. Political Power Monday, April 15, 2013 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM Eastern The politics of the United States for over a century have been dominated by the idea that the power of government was required to restrain and manage the power of businesspeople in the economy.
Monster Energy is getting out of the dietary supplement business. But its customers shouldn’t panic: It’s going into the beverage business—with the same products. The change, you see, has nothing to do with what Monster makes or its customers buy. It’s simply a question of regulatory classification. Monster thinks its energy drinks can qualify as either supplements or beverages, and it’s switching in order to change its regulatory burdens. Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois is trying to increase the regulatory burdens on dietary supplements.
If there was a single issue that the diverse audience at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) agreed on, it was that if the GOP intends to remain a major party in American politics, the idea of re-branding shouldn’t be taken as a polite suggestion—it’s a demand. But acknowledging the very real need for a message that can broaden the party’s base simply doesn’t go far enough. The GOP has specific challenges that require specific solutions; and the chief among these is the need to reconnect with young voters. If the plan to do this, they better actually mean it this time.
“We do not agree with the district court that the prosecutor may have been innocent of deliberate false statements.” It’s a rare bright moment in the legal saga told in Rich-Hunt : the Ninth Circuit’s recognition that Greg Reyes had been the victim of prosecutorial deception And last summer, I noted the light penalty a federal prosecutor had received for failing to reveal evidence.
The New York City Board of Health's ban on large sodas, which was to take effect tomorrow, has been struck down by a state judge. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ’s administration says it will appeal the decision —but for now, New York businesses will remain free to sell sodas in whatever sizes their customers want.
March 11, 2013 -- Alexander R. Cohen will be a guest on KFMO radio in Missouri tonight at 5:20 Eastern and again at 6:20 Eastern. You can tune in live here . Cohen will discuss his recent article: National Service Versus America.
Summer 2010 -- “’Value’ is that which one acts to gain and keep,” wrote Ayn Rand, “’virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it.” This six-session course focuses on the distinctive virtues highlighted by Objectivism: their basis in fact, their contrast with traditional moral ideals, and their role in a rational, value-seeking human life.
