Free Republic

I am here to pay homage to the pendulum. Many famous mathematicians and scientists have studied and learned from the pendulum, including Sir Isaac Newton. By studying the pendulum, Galileo surmised the duration of a single day could be broken down into small measurable increments. By using Galilean principles, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens invented the first pendulum clock. Leon Foucault, a French physicist, via his invention, the Foucault pendulum, was able to demonstrate that the Earth spins on its axis. But as important as the pendulum has been to the world of science, the pendulum has served equally well as...

Earlier today the Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Eamonn Butler, was being filmed by a camera crew in Great Smith Street, London as part of an interview about the G20 for Canadian television. This perfectly innocent and lawful activity came to the attention of the police, being reported as 'suspicious' because they were not far from two 'sensitive' government buildings - the Department for Children, Schools and Families and Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform. The result, Dr Butler explains, was a police car arriving on the scene, blue lights flashing. He and the camera crew were...

If Adam Smith were here today to witness our economic debacle, this “Great O-pression” which seems to be consuming our wealth with an unprecedented fury, would he support the idea of massive government intervention to “fix” the problems we face? Adam Smith is, of course, the father of free market economic thinking, the great initial intellectual force behind capitalism, the author of our seminal text, The Wealth of Nations, the man behind the proverbial “invisible hand” that mysteriously and relentlessly drives our individual economic activity toward the efficient allocation of scarce resources and the achievement of the greatest possible good...

With the debate over the "Porkulus" bill in Congress (or, as I like to call it, "Pork and Awe"), there has been a great deal of related discussion over why the bill will work, or won't work, to stimulate the economy and create much-needed jobs and economic growth. However, much of the debate has devolved into partisan bickering. It might help to take a step back, and consider the differences between government and private spending in a more general sense. To begin with, what does the stimulus package claim to do? Apparently, it authorizes the government to spend money, in...

The free market is dead. It was killed by the Bolshevik Revolution, fascist dirigisme, Keynesianism, the Great Depression, the second world war economic controls, the Labour party victory of 1945, Keynesianism again, the Arab oil embargo, Anthony Giddens’s “third way” and the current financial crisis. The free market has died at least 10 times in the past century. And whenever the market expires people want to know what Adam Smith would say. It is a moment of, “Hello, God, how’s my atheism going?” Adam Smith would be laughing too hard to say anything. Smith spotted the precise cause of our...

With today's economy, wouldn't it be nice if we knew how to make an economy grow? To know what works and what doesn't? Well, we do. We just prefer to ignore the truth.What works is economic freedom. What doesn't work is more government. I'm sorry that those words sound simplistic and like Republican "ideology" (or at least what used to be Republican ideology - before the Bailout Fairy arrived). But they have the benefit of being true. If you were to start from scratch, ignoring all ideology and going simply by the evidence of what produces prosperity, you would come...

“Adam Smith is often wrongly seen as the patron of free market capitalism without a conscience.” -- Gordon Brown, Prime Minister (Labour Party) I just celebrated the most unusual 4th of July fireworks I’ve ever experienced -- in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Nobel Prize economist Vernon Smith unveiled a giant statue of Adam Smith, on Royal Mile Road. For decades, Marxists and socialists could go to the Highgate Cemetery in London and honor their patron saint, Karl Marx. Now, finally, we free-marketers can make our own pilgrimage to Edinburgh and worship our own hero to free-market capitalism.

Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America. But it will never set foot on the manicured lawns of Francisco Marroquin University. For nearly 40 years, this private college has been a citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here, banners quoting "The Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith -- he of the powdered wig and invisible hand -- flutter over the campus food court. Every undergraduate, regardless of major, must study market economics and the philosophy of individual rights embraced by the U.S. founding fathers, including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." A sculpture commemorating Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is...

The Edinburgh home where the pioneer of economics spent his final years has been put up for sale. Adam Smith lived in Panmure House in the Old Town from 1778 until his death aged 67 in 1790. The A-listed building has now been put up for sale by its owner, Edinburgh City Council, after it was deemed surplus to requirements. The authoritative Adam Smith Institute today called on any new development within the building to remember its historic past and commemorate the close link it has with the economist. It has been put on the market for offers over £700,000...

"The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state." -- Alexander Hamilton (Report on Manufactures, 1790) Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., 362.

LONDON (AFP) - An image of 18th century economist Adam Smith (news, bio, voting record) features on a new twenty pound banknote that the Bank of England (BoE) hopes will slash fraud and counterfeits. Smith, widely seen as one of the founding fathers of modern economics, is the first Scottish person to ever grace a UK banknote. While the size and colour of the note remain the same, it offers new security measures such as a holographic strip, raised-print areas and an improved watermark. Commenting on the choice of Smith, BoE Governor Mervyn King said: "SmithÂ’s insights into human nature,...

A £20 note featuring economist Adam Smith will be issued on 13 March, the Bank of England has said. The note will also include a number of new security features designed to tackle counterfeiting. While the Bank has yet to reveal the safety measures, they are thought to include a see through feature and a holographic strip. The current £20 note, which features composer Edward Elgar, will be phased out after the launch of the Adams note. Enhanced security "The introduction of the Adam Smith £20 from 13 March will be a major undertaking for us as the £20 denomination...

The contribution of world-renowned 18th century philosopher and economist, Adam Smith, is to be acknowledged on a new-design 20 banknote the Bank of England is to intorduce into circulation next Spring. Changes to the design mean that the note will start a new seires of Bank of England banknotes.

The Wealth of Nations is, without doubt, a book that changed the world. But it has been taking its time. Two hundred thirty-one years after publication, Adam Smith's practical truths are only beginning to be absorbed in full. And where practical truths are most important-amid counsels of the European Union, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, British Parliament, and American Congress-the lessons of Adam Smith end up as often sunk as sinking in. Adam Smith's Simple Principles . Smith illuminated the mystery of economics in one flash: "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production." There is no...

How to bring manufacturing back home -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: September 29, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern In July, our trade deficit hit yet another all-time record, $68 billion, an annual rate of $816 billion. Imports surged to $188 billion for the month, as our dependency on foreigners for the vital necessities of our national life ever deepens. China's trade surplus with us was $19.6 billion for July alone, moving toward an all-time record of $235 billion for 2006 – the largest trade deficit one country has ever run with another. Our deficit with Mexico is running at an annual rate of $60...

This past Wednesday, when I attended Students for Saving Social Security’s event on Social Security reform with roughly 300 other young people, I was overcome by an unusual Washington, D.C. emotion—hope. Having only lived in our nation’s capital for about a year, I have not yet succumbed to the total disillusionment and cynicism of many people, but it has certainly affected my optimistic tendencies. But in contradiction to my sometimes-attitude that nothing in this city ever gets done, let alone gets done right, I found myself believing something could be changed. Social Security was considered for decades to be the...

Young conservatives in DC apparently like intellectual stimulation in a lecture format, but then again the free beer might have been on more than a few minds. Last Wednesday night, more than 80 young conservative intellectuals crowded into a back room of The Brickskeller on 22nd St, NW to listen to a professor talk about vocation, to eat and drink, and to meet their peers and colleagues. It was the first meeting of “Conservatism on Tap” presented by the ISI (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) Young Alumni group of DC founded by Princeton graduate Evan Baehr. The event was a success, with...

FREE TO CHOOSE: Tyranny of Control Friedman: It is harvest time and Japanese farmers gather their crops for the rice market in Kyoto. Of course, they will try to get as much for it as possible and the buyer's will try to buy it as cheaply as possible. That is how markets are supposed to work. That is what Adam Smith, the Scotsman who turned economics into a modern science, observed 200 years ago. He observed something else too. Adam Smith: In every country it is always and must be in the interest of the great body of people to...

Welfare discourages crime. Crime is usually the other main source of income for poor people, other than welfare. The poor and disenfranchised have shown themselves perpetually ripe for criminal activity, such as in France's recent riots, the early days of organized crime in Sicily, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the current gestation of jihadism in poverty-stricken Middle Eastern countries, among many others. Junsen Zhang, professor of economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, studied U.S. welfare programs and found a strong negative relationship between welfare programs and property crime.

couple hundred years ago, in his "Theory of the Moral Sentiments," Adam Smith contended that capitalism requires a moral and ethical center if it is to function effectively and to the benefit of all. About thirty years ago, supply-side economic philosopher Irving Kristol similarly emphasized the importance of capitalism's moral compass. His wife, the brilliant historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, wrote regularly about the importance of morality in society, culture, and the economy, a topic she covered in her standout book, "The De-Moralization of Society." Bea Himmelfarb sets off the Victorians in English history as an example of a moral society. These...

Sheep's clothing and Adam Smith -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 13, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Vox Day -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com How does one resolve the question of the presumably cataclysmic meeting between the hitherto immovable rock and the historically unstoppable force? Perhaps by reversing the logic of the famous question: "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" Is the rock truly immovable? Or, alternatively, is the force actually unstoppable? I mention this because I have long been a vocal advocate of free trade. I was raised on Adam Smith, inoculated against the usual collegiate flirtation with...

Scion of America’s greatest Keynesian, James K. Galbraith recently penned one of the most astonishing near misses in recent memory. In the December/January edition of Mother Jones Galbraith accuses free-market economists starting with Adam Smith of being Intelligent Design (ID) hucksters. “Economists… have been Intelligent Designers since the beginning,” Galbraith writes. “Adam Smith was a deist; he believed in a world governed by a benevolent system of natural law… Smith's Creator did not interfere. He simply wrote the laws and left them for events to demonstrate and man to discover.” Galbraith’s analogy is badly forced. But it is forced ultimately...

From When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten Kumarian Press and Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995 Proponents of corporate libertarianism regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint. His writing remains to this day the intellectual foundation of policies advanced in the name of market freedom that are allowing a few hundred corporations to consolidate their control over markets all over the world. See An Economic System Dangerously Out of Control. Ironically, Smith's epic work The Wealth of Nations, which was first published in 1776, presents a radical condemnation of business monopolies sustained and protected by...

Individualism Smith derived his much of his approach to moral questions from his teacher Hutcheson, but he also broke with his mentor on a central point. Hutcheson had grounded the moral sense exclusively on benevolence, which promoted the greatest happiness of the greatest number (He appears to have been the first to formulate the utilitarian calculus), and he regarded self-love or, as we should say now, concern for self interest or self esteem as contaminating any virtuous motive. Smith, by contrast, thought this left too little room for the power of self-love: “Regard to our own private happiness and...

Leftists love to complain and they especially love to whine about "greed." They just don't get it. A market economy is based on incentives. The prospect of financial reward is what motivates most people to work, save and invest. There's nothing particularly ingenious about a system that recognizes this. It's intuitive. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith didn't invent an economic system; he merely observed and analyzed what people do naturally when left to their own devices. Socialism, on the other hand, is an ingenious system, an invention of coercive economic utopians, based on the notion that human nature...

Wherever you are, Adam Smith, call your agent. Darth Vader is stealing your best stuff. The new installment of "Star Wars" has set off the usual dreary red-blue squabble, with liberals using the film to attack Republicans, and some conservatives calling for a boycott. But - and I know this is hard to believe for a movie with characters named General Grievous and Count Dooku - there's actually a serious bipartisan lesson about the dark side of politics. If you can sit through the endless light-saber duels and robotic dialogue, you finally see what turned Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader....

There are many kinds of anti-capitalism. The most militant variety, involving street protests and kicked-in windows, has subsided a little lately. But this was never the most important kind. A broader, milder, even cordial, discontent with capitalism saturates Western culture. It has become so familiar that it barely registers at the conscious level. But the feeling is there, and it creates the climate in which public policy is framed. Sipping a cup of Starbucks Fair Trade Blend -- the kind that guarantees growers a "living wage," while encouraging "equitable and sustainable development" (as opposed to the more normal kind of...

IN THE next couple of weeks, the cardinals will elect a new pope. He will be a holy man because the cardinals understand the nature of prayer; he will have been a capable bishop, because the cardinals understand the nature of Church administration; he will have a powerful personality, if not as charismatic as that of Pope John Paul II. What more can one say about his likely views? The next pope will be a socialist; no doubt a democratic socialist, but a socialist all the same. Almost every cardinal and bishop in the Roman Catholic Church, and probably every...

WILL THE real Adam Smith stand up, please? There certainly are plenty of phoney versions on parade whenever his name is mentioned. Some on the Right brazenly saw in Smith’s name an authority against much of what he opposed on moral grounds. He was cited to oppose shorter working hours, to continue employing women and children in coal mines and dark satanic mills, even in defence of slavery. Smith allegedly advised against interference in the business of business. The cries went up - Laissez faire! Leave the mine and mill owners alone! They know best. The invisible hand will...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan paid tribute on Sunday to the father of modern economics, saying that 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith was "a towering contributor to the development of the modern world." Greenspan, who this month began his final year as Fed chairman, delivered the Adam Smith Memorial Lecture at Fife College in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland, where the early proponent of free-market capitalism was born in 1723. "In his 'Wealth of Nations,' Smith reached far beyond the insights of his predecessors to frame a global view of how market economies, just then emerging, worked," Greenspan said in...

...Her book is thus animated by dismay and perplexity over the way the French Enlightenment is seen as the main intellectual event of the 18th century, whereas a parallel and in many respects more successful movement in Britain is routinely relegated to an inferior status. Her heroes, therefore, are not Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau as much as Adam Smith, David Hume and Edmund Burke. In a similar spirit, she invokes and concurs with Hannah Arendt's notion that the American revolution, rather than the revolution in France, was the great political watershed of modern times. For Himmelfarb, the contrast between the...

A boat party in an exclusive area of Long Island Sunday night was interrupted - when a severed human hand mysteriously dropped out of the sky onto the deck of a boat, police said yesterday.

<p>Trade is a "moral issue," declares Senator John Edwards. The Democratic Presidential candidate is in high dudgeon that "bad trade agreements," by which he means those signed by Bill Clinton, are stealing jobs away from American workers.</p> <p>It should be no surprise by now that his main competitor, Senator John Kerry, has responded by saying, "Me too." Just as Mr. Kerry parroted the rhetoric of Howard Dean on Iraq, the man who voted for Nafta now claims there is no difference between him and Mr. Edwards on trade. This scion of a Boston Brahmin family that made its fortune from the China trade is now accusing "Benedict Arnold companies and CEOs" of exporting American jobs.</p>

At issue is a quote that I've just run across that suggests Adam Smith wrote the following: "The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....[As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to] 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'" Adam Smith --AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH...

Adam Smith’s Laissez-Fire Package: What Grampaw ForgotSept 27, 2003 The last article I wrote dealing with Adam Smith received an objection from a person by the nickname of “Restorer” which took me to task: [Source] The piece doesn't ever really say that Smithian economics works despite, or rather because of, the fact that its practicioners are mercantilistic in philosophy as far as their own practices go. Restorer has a good point, one explored thoroughly by Walter Wriston, chairman of what used to be Citibank back in the 1980s. According to Wriston, the market will work despite big government because Smith’s...

One of the more enduring contradictions still living in the American intellectual scene is the presence of a strong conservative movement that is intellectual in thrust – a bookish conservatism – and the enduring stereotype that the “right wing” is nothing more than the stupid faction. This contradiction is so engrained that more than a few conservatives actually thrive on it, in the same way a bodybuilder considers himself a “weak wimp” for being able to bench press ‘only’ 200 lbs. You probably know that this leads to a different trap. If a young intellectual pursues excellence using that kind...

What's With The Adam Smith Tie-Dye? Sept 5, 2003 Us on the Right are accustomed to saying that the Left just doesn’t understand us. It’s easy to laugh at their talking heads, especially if you’re hip to a few things. Such as this: remember the slogan “you just don’t get it?” Why it was so jarring to the naïve mind? Television networks prefer people with a reactionary personality on the screen: it makes for more exciting debates. The patient man, or woman, doesn’t bring the kind of excitement that takes the typical viewer away from the football channel, so he...

Some of my Christian friends are suspicious of my interest in economics. They see economics as a product of Enlightenment rationalism, along with deism, atheism, the chaos of the French Revolution and other un-Christian aspects of the modern age. So I am greatly pleased to be able to direct them to the just reissued edition of Alejandro A. Chafuen's Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics, (formerly titled "Christians for Freedom"). This short book deals exclusively with the pre-Enlightenment Scholastics, who were primarily members of religious orders in Spain. These men built on the work of Thomas...

In many ways, Perryton – a town of 8,000 where the telephone book lists almost as many Hernándezes as Smiths – serves as a contemporary lesson of how a rural community on the cusp of change moves to educate, train, integrate and empower Hispanics who have become crucial to its economic survival. "It makes no difference what you do for a living, the church you go to or the civic club you belong to," said Bruce Roberson, 56, the county attorney who came to Perryton 30 years ago from Lubbock and doesn't plan on leaving. "If you're willing to pull...

The Invisible Hand's Green Thumb By Nick Schulz TCS Adam Smith may not have known it at the time he penned his famous phrase, but it's turning out that the invisible hand happens to have a green thumb. A growing body of research supports a controversial proposition, one that's forcing environmentalists and the general public to rethink long-held views on business, markets, energy use, technology and the environment. The proposition is that, as the subtitle of an important new book puts it, "poverty, not affluence, is the environment's number one enemy." The book is The Real Environmental Crisis by Jack...

The Wealth of This Nation – Part I Diane Alden Wednesday, April 30, 2003 In its best form, capitalism is a system which is not biased towards any group of people or special interest. At its best it emphasizes and supports a level playing field on which as many individuals and economic entities as possible will progress. When capitalism is working correctly no particular economic interest has a comparative disadvantage. Capitalism doesn’t ask for favors from government nor does it expect government to pay its bills or change the playing field in its favor. In the past, and of necessity,...

Some material to ponder for our free market/free trade fundamentalists Initial quote about Thomas Malthus, a disciple of Adam Smith: "[...] In order to have a supply of labor exceeding demand -- thereby keeping labor costs low -- Malthus was a profound enemy of birth control. The more children these poor engender, the larger is the supply of cheap labor. In order that these masses of children do not constitute a drain on welfare dollars, Malthus proposes to just let the sick, little blighters die. He defends these deaths by saying that it is really to the benefit of the...

Today is May 1, the International Day of Labour. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this column to the triumph of global capitalism. For if there is one social principle on which all economists, historians and politicians must now surely agree, it is that capitalism has done more than any other human construct to benefit working people around the world. Even if there were room for argument about the benefits of free trade and free markets to workers in advanced industrial countries — and there really cannot be, if we compare what has happened to ordinary people’s lives in Western...

<p>KUWAIT CITY. -- Anyone who doubts capitalism is man's natural condition should test Adam Smith's precepts in the ultimate statist environment: a national war mobilization.</p> <p>Here in Kuwait City, where the government is allowing hundreds of thousands of fighting men to stage an invasion of Iraq, we are within easy missile range of Saddam's forces.</p>

Democrats Seek to Outlaw Linux Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., whose biggest political contributor is Microsoft, is seeking an end to GPL. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/10/24/1035416921766.html Bid to outlaw GPL October 24 2002 Leaders of the New Democrat Coalition in the US Congress are seeking to have licenses such as those in the GNU and GPL outlawed on the grounds that they are "restrictive, preclude innovation, improvement, adoption and establishment of commercial IP rights." In a letter to fellow members of their coalition, the three members of Congress leading the charge - Adam Smith, Ron Kind and Jim Davis - claim that "the terms...

"The old doctrine that the slavery of the black, is essential to the freedom of the white race, can maintain itself only in the presence of slavery, where interest and prejudice are the controlling powers, but it stands condemned equally by reason and experience. The statesmanship of today condemns and repudiates it as a shallow pretext for oppression. It belongs with the commercial fallacies exposed long ago by Adam Smith. It stands on a level with the contemptible notion, that every crumb of bread that goes into another man's mouth, is just so much bread taken from mine." Frederick Douglass,...