The Freeman is a magazine published by the Foundation for Economic Education, a non-profit organization founded by Leonard Read in 1946. I’ve attended lectures at the Foundation’s mansion in Irvington-on-Hudson, NY since 2002. Lately, however, I have been a little bit disappointed with some of the things I’ve been reading
Tag: Articles
The death of a loved one can send you into a metaphysical tailspin, so to speak. You want so much to believe that you will one day see them again. At the same time, if you’re like me, you want to puzzle it out with reason. But this is a
Doublespeak is a type of logical fallacy known as equivocation. Equivocation is the use in a logical argument of a word that has two or more distinct meanings. The purpose of using Doublespeak is to evade real debate by confusing or obfuscating. In any spoken language, words naturally change over
In the first part of this two-part series on inflation and deflation we discussed how money came to be used to facilitate trade. Metals were the best commodities for use as money because they were durable, relatively rare, and were easy to mold into identical pieces. As the wealth of
What exactly does it mean to be a “soft science”? Over the holidays I got into a discussion with a relative about just this topic. Economics, he told me, is a “soft” science, unlike physics which is a “hard” science. What exactly is the difference? The word “science” itself is
It sounds strange to a lot of people that both deflation and inflation are being talked about right now as if they could possibly happen at the same time. If inflation is rising prices, and deflation is falling prices, how could they happen at the same time? In fact, there
You do not have a RIGHT to medical treatment. That’s right, you heard me. You do not have a RIGHT to medical treatment, PERIOD. Let that sink in a bit. We’ll come back to it. Now, there is a whole lot wrong with socialized medicine. Economically, of course it is a disaster.
Yes, I know. They are poisonous and you will drop dead if you so much as swallow one. NOT! In fact, I believed this fallacy since the time I was a small child. Many times throughout my life I wondered to myself how in the hell more people didn’t drop
Well, I’ve finally done it for this year. I’ve made the pumpkin soup. It’s amazing how much work it is to make the soup when you are cutting up your own pumpkins. The soup itself is actually quite easy. I’ll get right to it. Here’s what I did: 7 lbs
There is often talk in the financial papers about the “savings rate.” You’ll often see pundits making moral judgments about how Americans spend too much and save too little implying that the average American is a spendthrift, wasting resources, and living on borrowed time. On the flip side, there are
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. In the Company of Men Sony Pictures Neil LaBute writer/director LaBute (writer and director) aptly sets his movie in the ubiquitous American scenes of dating and business — work and women. His scenes are all too familiar to the average American — and
A Declaration of Independence for the Mind Throughout History, mysticism has attempted to disassociate Man from his faculty of Reason. The underlying theme of the mystic, in all of his manifestations, proclaims that Man is helpless – impotent against the supernatural, God, and the unknowable. When the veil of superstition
A generalist is a person whose knowledge is dispersed over a wide range of subjects. The generalist is usually contrasted with the specialist, whose knowledge is particularly deep in a specific field. But, in reality, these terms are not mutually exclusive. A man who specializes in one field may generalize
From ‘depravityscale.org’: Courts across America are using terms like ‘heinous’, ‘atrocious’ and ‘cruel’ when weighing penalties for a variety of crimes. However, the interpretations of these terms and resulting punishment, vary from state to state. The Forensic Panel seeks to provide a standardized scale for the justice system to determine