Robert Higgs Archive
Did Small Government Cause Our Current Problems?
Those who continually blame insufficient regulation for our present plight offer little or no evidence. They rely instead on the implicit assumption that if only the regulations had been much stricter, the bankers and other business-sector malefactors never would have perpetrated their evil deeds. This faith in the regulators is touching, to be sure, but it is also extremely naïve. We now have -- and long have had -- miles of regulations on the books and legions of regulators at work in scores of government agencies. What specific power did they lack? And had they been given even greater powers, budgets, and staffs, what enchantment would have transformed these ostensible guardians into smart, dogged champions of the public interest, rather than the time-serving drones and co-conspirators with the regulated firms that they have always been? FULL ARTICLE
Banking and the Business Cycle
>I know of no better book on the economic dynamics of the 1920s boom and early 1930s bust in the United States. I know about several other excellent books that every student of economics and economic history should read on the same topics, but if I could recommend only a single book to an aspiring economist, or even to an interested lay reader, this is the one I would recommend. FULL ARTICLE
The Welfare State and the Promise of Protection
Our ancestors relied on themselves; we rely on the welfare state. But the "safety net" that governments have stretched beneath us seems more and more to be a spider's web in which we are entangled and from which we must extricate ourselves if we are to preserve a prosperous and free society. FULL ARTICLE
Salamanca Live Blog