Fascinating Questions from The Independent Review
Carl Close • Tuesday, March 26, 2013
The Spring 2013 issue of The Independent Review—the Independent Institute’s flagship scholarly journal, edited by Robert Higgs—is hot off the press. Below you’ll find links to articles and book reviews that address a host of intriguing questions:
- Why have domestic police agencies across the United States resorted increasingly to “no-knock” raids and other military-type tactics formerly considered off-limits to them? Read the article.
- Why have the politico-economic pathologies associated with “crony capitalism” become more common with the growth of government? Read the article.
- Why were many of the early transcontinental railroads associated with massive corruption, tremendous capital misallocation, and environmental damage? Read the review.
- If the market economy is to triumph in the marketplace of ideas, which message must its advocates emphasize? Read the review.
- In what way do housing polices in the United States amount to a kind of class warfare by elites and upper-income groups against the working class? Read the review.
- What are the assumptions that underlie proposals to enact “non-coercive” tax incentives and penalties put forth to encourage citizens to live the good life? Read the review.
- Can government programs that encourage consumers to “buy local” raise the price of locally grown produce and undermine “food security” in the developing world? Read the review.
- How has the United Kingdom’s abandonment of classical liberalism created problems in education, public health, urban planning, and national defense? Read the review.
- What does Georgetown University political philosopher Jason Brennan’s new book on libertarianism offer that others on the subject don’t? Read the review.
- How did Congressman Ron Paul rise from obscurity to the helm of a national political movement? Read the review.
Subscribers to our print edition will also see the following questions addressed in our Spring 2013 issue:
- Why do historians give their highest rankings to the U.S. presidents who have involved the nation in the wars that have claimed the most American lives?
- Why might scholars wish to reconsider their praise of historian Gabriel Kolko’s work on the history of regulatory reform?
- How do recent research and modern economic tools fill in the gaps in Edward Gibbon’s analysis of the decline and fall of the Roman empire?
- Political theorists John Rawls and F. A. Hayek can hardly be viewed as allies on the issues of what constitutes the good society and the proper means to achieve it, but what would a Rawlsian justification for Hayekian classical liberalism look like?
- Why do Gus diZerega and Robert H. Nelson disagree on the question of whether or not economics and environmentalism are belief systems at odds?
[This item first appeared in the March 26, 2013, issue of The Lighthouse. To subscribe to this weekly bulletin of public-policy analysis, publication summaries, and event announcements, please check the appropriate box and enter your email address here.]
