David Boaz

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Liberty Fund has just produced an amazing item — The Portable Library of Liberty, a single DVD containing the complete texts of more than 1000 books, audio interviews with 26 great scholars, and more. And it’s free for the asking!

Just take a look at what you could be carrying in your laptop:

1,001 full text titles in PDF format, self-contained and searchable. They are organized by titles, subject areas, and topics. Highlights include the complete scholarly editions of the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill; the collected works of Jefferson, Madison, John Adams, & many others; and 166 full-text books published by Liberty Fund.

works by hundreds of authors from Ancient Sumeria to the present, organized by people, periods, and schools of thought, such as the French Enlightenment, the Founding Fathers, 19th century natural rights theorists, the Austrian School of Economics, and many others.

audio interviews with 26 leading scholars from the Intellectual Portrait Series: Conversations with Leading Classical Liberal Figures of Our Time and 7 lectures on The Legacy of Friedrich Hayek.

a collection of Quotations about Liberty & Power which is a compilation of all the quotes of the week that have appeared on the front page of the Online Library of Liberty since its inception.

My initial response was, if all that stuff is on the web, then why do you need a DVD? And I guess there are two answers to that: First, there are people around the world who have computers but not regular internet access. Liberty Fund officers say that a typical request is something like “I am a masters student in economics at the national university in Bangladesh. Thanks for making this available to me. We do not have these titles in our library. Can I make another copy to give to my friends?”

And second, there are times that all of us could access a DVD but not the internet, such as on flights.

So — at the low, low cost of . . . nothing, it’s truly an amazing deal. Order yours today. Or you could wait for the 6th edition later this year, when all the titles will be in the new ePub format for even easier reading on portable devices. The pace of progress quickens!

Free-market reforms are hard to come by this year, but there’s just been a small victory for economic freedom and individual rights in Virginia. A bill enabling Virginia companies to offer life insurance benefits to people their employees choose, including same-sex partners, was passed overwhelmingly by the legislature in April. My friend Kelly Young discovered three years ago that Virginia law prevented his employer’s insurance company from selling him group life insurance on his partner. The company did offer such insurance in other states. As the Washington Blade reports:

Previously, state law permitted Virginia residents to take out group life insurance coverage only for a legal spouse or a child under age 25. But the new statute, which takes effect July 1, broadens that group of people to include anyone with whom a Virginia resident has [an insurable] interest, including a same-sex partner.

The bill, introduced by Del. Adam Ebbin (D), did not even get out of committee in 2008 and 2009, despite a ringing editorial endorsement by the conservative Richmond Times-Dispatch and the support of Virginia FREE, the state’s most effective business association. This year, perhaps because of the addition of a Republican, Del. Tom Rust, as chief sponsor, it moved smoothly through both houses. Gov. Robert McDonnell, who has come in for criticism in these parts, commendably signed the bill.

As the Times-Dispatch editorialized two years ago:

Note well what this bill is not: a mandate. Insurance companies would not be required to cover anybody they did not wish to. They would remain free to reject coverage they did not care to offer. They simply would not be prohibited from covering persons they are willing to cover.

In a free market, that is precisely how insurance ought to work: The buyer and the seller of the policy work out the terms between themselves. The state’s job is merely to enforce the contract — not to write it. Ebbin’s bill deserves a resounding and unanimous aye.

It took two more years, but at long last Virginia’s legislators have legalized this particular capitalist act among consenting adults. In this case, it’s likely to be same-sex couples who will benefit most from the removal of this barrier to commerce. Just another little step toward equality under the law.

Cato senior fellow Tom Palmer and friends Don Boudreaux and June Arunga debate free trade with the legendary Lou Dobbs around John Stossel’s anchor desk on tonight’s edition of “Stossel.” 8:00 p.m. and midnight EDT on the Fox Business Network.

Stossel’s weekly column also interviews Tom Palmer.

Tim Carney has a blog post at the Examiner that’s worth quoting in full:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has issued its 2009 congressional scorecard, and once again, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. — certainly one of the two most free-market politicians in Washington — gets the lowest score of any Republican.

Paul was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers not to win the Chamber’s “Spirit of Enterprise Award.” He scored only a 67%, bucking the Chamber on five votes, including:

• Paul opposed the “Solar Technology Roadmap Act,” which boosted subsidies for unprofitable solar energy technology.
• Paul opposed the “Travel Promotion Act,” which subsidizes the tourism industry with a new fee on international visitors.
• Paul opposed the largest spending bill in history, Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill.

(Rep John Duncan, R-Tenn., tied Ron Paul with 67%. John McHugh, R-N.Y., scored a 40%, but he missed most of the year because he went off to the Obama administration.)

I wrote about this phenomenon last year, when the divergence was even greater between the Chamber’s agenda and the free-market agenda:

Similarly, Texas libertarian GOPer Rep. Ron Paul—the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
This year’s picture was less glaring, but it’s still more evidence that “pro-business” is not the same as “pro-freedom.” The U.S. Chamber is the former. Ron Paul, and the libertarian position, is the latter.

I suspect that on issues such as free trade agreements and immigration reform, I might be closer to the Chamber’s position than to Ron Paul’s. But to suggest that Paul is wrong to vote against business subsidies — or that DeMint was wrong to vote against Bush’s 2008 stimulus package and the $700 billion TARP bailout — certainly does illustrate how much difference there can be between “pro-business” and “pro-market.” Instead of “Spirit of Enterprise,” the Chamber should call these the “Spirit of Subsidy Awards.”

Tim Carney has a blog post at the Examiner that’s worth quoting in full:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has issued its 2009 congressional scorecard, and once again, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex. — certainly one of the two most free-market politicians in Washington — gets the lowest score of any Republican.

Paul was one of a handful of GOP lawmakers not to win the Chamber’s “Spirit of Enterprise Award.” He scored only a 67%, bucking the Chamber on five votes, including:

• Paul opposed the “Solar Technology Roadmap Act,” which boosted subsidies for unprofitable solar energy technology.
• Paul opposed the “Travel Promotion Act,” which subsidizes the tourism industry with a new fee on international visitors.
• Paul opposed the largest spending bill in history, Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill.

(Rep John Duncan, R-Tenn., tied Ron Paul with 67%. John McHugh, R-N.Y., scored a 40%, but he missed most of the year because he went off to the Obama administration.)

I wrote about this phenomenon last year, when the divergence was even greater between the Chamber’s agenda and the free-market agenda:

Similarly, Texas libertarian GOPer Rep. Ron Paul—the most steadfast congressional opponent of regulation, taxation, and any sort of government intervention in business—scored lower than 90% of Democrats last year on the Chamber’s scorecard.

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., had the most conservative voting record in 2008 according to the American Conservative Union (ACU), and was a “taxpayer hero” according to the National Taxpayer’s Union (NTU), but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his 2008 record was less pro-business than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
This year’s picture was less glaring, but it’s still more evidence that “pro-business” is not the same as “pro-freedom.” The U.S. Chamber is the former. Ron Paul, and the libertarian position, is the latter.

I suspect that on issues such as free trade agreements and immigration reform, I might be closer to the Chamber’s position than to Ron Paul’s. But to suggest that Paul is wrong to vote against business subsidies — or that DeMint was wrong to vote against Bush’s 2008 stimulus package and the $700 billion TARP bailout — certainly does illustrate how much difference there can be between “pro-business” and “pro-market.” Instead of “Spirit of Enterprise,” the Chamber should call these the “Spirit of Subsidy Awards.”

Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute writes in the Wall Street Journal about Andy Stern’s retirement from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). He noted that Stern’s

principal legacy will be having headed up a union that managed to add 1.2 million members during a time when overall unionization rates continued to plunge in the U.S.

But it’s important to understand how Mr. Stern pulled this off, because his union’s story is really the story of the transformation of the labor movement in America. The SEIU did not win its most significant victories on the picket lines, but rather in backroom political deals with legislative leaders, especially in states like California where the political class is already union-friendly.

Those deals helped the SEIU to organize workplaces that are nominally considered part of the private sector but actually are heavily controlled and influenced by government regulation, most especially in health care.

The article mentions Malanga’s forthcoming book, Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer.

Which is not to be confused with Shakedown: How Corporations, Government, and Trial Lawyers Abuse the Judicial Process, published by Cato Institute chairman Robert A. Levy in 2004. Then again, there probably are some points of overlap.

It was a good idea to get science and democracy from the ancient Greeks. It’s not such a good idea to get fiscal policy from the modern Greeks.

But that’s the way we’re headed.

Greece has a budget deficit of 13.6 percent. We’re not in that league — ours is only 10.6 percent, the highest level since 1945.

Greece has a public debt of 113 percent of GDP. We’re not there yet. But the 2009 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports show the combined unfunded liability of these two programs has reached nearly $107 trillion.

Under President Obama’s budget, debt held by the public would grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020. It could rise to 215 percent of GDP in 30 years. Welcome to Greece.

Here’s a graphic presentation of the official debt and real net liabilities of various countries, including the United States and Greece at the right. (From the Telegraph, apparently based on Jagadeesh Gokhale’s report.)

And here’s a Heritage Foundation chart on where the national debt is headed in the coming decade:

Paul Krugman wrote, “My prediction is that politicians will eventually be tempted to resolve the [fiscal] crisis the way irresponsible governments usually do: by printing money, both to pay current bills and to inflate away debt. And as that temptation becomes obvious, interest rates will soar.” Now he was writing in 2003, when a different president was in office, but he was also warning about the possibility of a ten-year deficit of $3 trillion. Presumably the same warnings apply to today’s much larger deficit projections. And he was absolutely right to fear that government would turn to inflation as a supposed solution.

Concern about the pay, benefits, and performance of government employees seems to be growing. Chris Edwards’s articles on how government pay is outpacing private-sector pay have generated media attention, cartoons, and angry rebuttals from the head of the federal Office of Personnel Management. Steven Greenhut has a new book, Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation, and is writing lots of newspaper articles on the high costs of government unions, also the topic of a recent Cato Policy Analysis. New Jersey unions are not finding much sympathy as they try to hold on to their raises, benefits, pensions, and work rules in the face of Gov. Chris Christie’s attempt to cut the budget. Liberal journalist Mickey Kaus is running for the U.S. Senate, trying to warn California’s voters and the Democratic Party about the excessive power and destructive influence of public employee unions.

And now Saturday Night Live. The zeitgeist-riding comedy show had a truly harsh sketch this weekend about the “Public Employee of the Year Awards.” It touched every element of popular resentment toward government workers: “people with government jobs are just like workers everywhere — except for the lifetime job security, guaranteed annual raises, early retirement on generous pensions, and full medical coverage with no deductibles, office visit fees, or copayments” — “retirement on full disability” by an obviously young and healthy worker — “Surliest and Least Cooperative State Employee” — “3200 hours [a year] on the job, all of it overtime” — New York school janitors living in Florida — employees with two current jobs and full disability — an entire workday at the DMV without serving a single customer — no-work contracts —  surprisingly early closings — and “he’s on break.”

Time for unions to start worrying?

General Motors chairman Ed Whitacre is appearing in ads on all the Sunday morning shows repeating the message of his Wall Street Journal op-ed, titled “The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full,” and the company’s full-page newspaper ads:

We’re proud to announce: We’ve repaid our government loan. In full. With interest. Five years ahead of the original schedule.

But wait: In the Wall Street Journal, Whitacre says the company has made a $5.8 billion payment to the governments of the United States and Canada. But don’t I recall that the GM bailout was $50 billion? Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation explains the whole story in Forbes: First, part of the bailout went into an “escrow fund,” and that government money is being used to pay back the small part of the bailout that was officially a loan. Second, GM is asking for another $10 billion loan to retool its plants to meet the stiffer Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, and paying back one government loan — with other government money — will make it easier to get another government loan.

And finally, of course, most of the bailout money was transferred to GM in return for a 60 percent stake in the company. And the taxpayers will get that money back if and when GM becomes a publicly traded company again, provided that the company’s market capitalization is eventually higher than it’s ever been in history. Don’t hold your breath.

These are called GM ads, but they could just as well be called BS ads.

Recently I wrote an article arguing that there never was a golden age of liberty and that in particular libertarians should not hail 19th-century America as a small-government paradise, at least not without grappling with the massive problem of slavery. Jacob Hornberger, author of an article that I criticized, responded in Reason, and I then responded here. Meanwhile, an interesting discussion took place on a email list of libertarian scholars, and I’m pleased to have gotten the permission of several participants to include some of that discussion here:

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