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Freedom in the 50 States
I’ve just gotten back from a Cato Institute event discussing the new study, Freedom in the 50 States, with my coauthor William Ruger, John Samples, and Michael Barone. I’ll post the video when it’s...
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How Do Libgressives Define Freedom?
Matt Yglesias throws some scorn the way of Freedom in the 50 States 2011: Reasonable people can disagree as to whether there’s more freedom in Los Angeles or Brooklyn, and there may be good reasons to...
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How Do Conservative Paternalists Define Freedom?
Having taken on left-liberals in my last post, it’s only fair to take a shot at the right too. Here‘s the Deseret News editorializing on why our recommendations for Utah are wrong: The report’s authors...
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Liberty as Amenity: Freedom, Migration, and Growth
Is liberty an “amenity” that people find attractive? We know that people do not necessarily tend to vote for liberty, in part because they are politically ignorant or even irrational, but when it comes...
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Moral Philosophy & Dogmatism
Political libertarians are a motley lot in terms of their moral philosophies. There are three dominant strands – utilitarians like Milton Friedman, deontologists like Robert Nozick, and teleologists...
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Identify the Speaker
The press is quite pleased with President Obama’s proclamations on gay marriage. The evolutionary process appears to have finally come to a conclusion. Yet, it might be useful to place the President’s...
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CEOs vs. Small Business Owners on Which Policies Make for a Business-Friendly...
Which public policies make an economy better for business? One way to answer this question is to ask businesspeople. Two recent surveys ask businesspeople to rank the American states on their...
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The Social Insurance State is the Administrative State
At Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Jason Brennan takes up the question of which country is most libertarian and lodges a complaint against global “economic freedom” indices: This index may understate how...
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A Thought Experiment on Freedom
Imagine two countries, each the size of the U.S. In one of them, the average tax rate is 1% (of income) lower than the other, but unlike the other it randomly selects ten innocent individuals for...
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From the Comments (Thought Experiment on Freedom)
From “A Thought Experiment on Freedom,” I thought these comments were worth highlighting. FreeDem: Freedom is more than marginal tax rates and the monetary value of different policies. Is there a way...
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The “New Hampshire Advantage”: Nearly Killed Off in 2009-10
Here is what my coauthor William Ruger and I wrote about New Hampshire in the 2011 edition of Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom: New Hampshire is by our count the freest...
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Can New Hampshire Be the Hong Kong of America?
Pileus‘s own Jason Sorens is, among many other things, the founder of the Free State Project. The FSP is an initiative that aims to put the convictions of people who talk about individual liberty to...
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*Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom* (Fred McMahon, ed.)
That’s the title of a new book from America’s Cato Institute, Canada’s Fraser Institute, and Germany’s Liberales Institut, which aims to create an index of personal freedom around the world. This is a...
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Freedom in the 50 States Teaser #3: Weighting the Variables
The new, book-length edition of Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom will be released on March 28 by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In the days leading up...
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“Suits and Sandals”: Different Freedom Indices for Different Folks
This post will illustrate how users can customize the freedom index according to their own judgments about how various policies affect freedom. In particular, it will show how the weighting for tax...
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Marriage and Culture Change
My marriage is a sacred compact between my wife and me before God. No law, proposition, or court decision can ever change that. The government’s recognition of my marriage did not make it the sacred...
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Free State or Bust
On Saturday I moved with my family to Lebanon, New Hampshire. I am teaching for a year in the Government Department at Dartmouth College. Although my reasons for leaving my tenure-track job at Buffalo...
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Is Free Will a Noble Lie?
Belief in freedom of the will has many beneficial consequences. Lab experiments have shown that people reading deterministic, anti-free will statements are more likely subsequently to cheat in their...
View ArticleWhat’s Wrong with Immigration Restrictions? The Same Thing That’s Wrong with...
My latest post at Learn Liberty explores the close parallels between certain arguments for immigration restrictions and gun restrictions: A common argument for restricting immigration to the United...
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