Free Republic

The original American system promised a society in which the benefits of civilization including liberty, property, privacy, security and justice would be available to all of its citizens who were willing to work for them. However, such a society can only be sustained when the majority of the citizens are mature adults who accept the basic principles of self-government, self-reliance, and mutual respect. Those principles require the individual to assume reponsibility for his own actions, to be a producer rather than a parasite, to exercise his liberty with consideration for others, and to support and defend the system. It doesn't...

Last spring the press was all aflutter with news that big media companies were actually getting smaller. ''The media moguls built them up, and now they are breaking them apart,''...(snip) But never mind that. Connoisseurs of monopoly need to shift their attention to the Internet, where we're on the brink of a concentration of media control that a few years ago would have been unimaginable.

Global Manipulators Move Beyond Petroleum The Saudis have a saying “My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son rides in a jet airplane – his son will ride a camel.” In July this year BP Amoco, the world’s second largest oil company, announced it had chosen a flower as its new emblem in a dramatic upheaval of the oil multinational’s global brand. Unveiling the new emblem, Sir John Browne, BP chief executive, suggested that “BP” be read not as British Petroleum, but as “Beyond Petroleum”. The new green and yellow floral sunburst design distances BP from its...

A lone milkman is delivering misery to the doorstep of the giant dairy industry. Hein Hettinga was once a simple dairy farmer who sold raw milk from his farm in Chino, Calif. Today the Dutch immigrant has expanded his operation so much, so fast, that some of the biggest dairy companies and cooperatives in the U.S. have banded together against him. They are lobbying for federal laws to close loopholes they claim he exploits. Mr. Hettinga counters that the only purpose of the proposed legislation is to kill competition -- and keep milk prices high. "That's not right," says the...

HONG KONG National league tables make good journalistic copy, which is devoured especially avidly in nations that happen to score near the top of this or that list. But they can equally tell some very tall tales that reflect better the biases of their assessment criteria than facts on the ground. One of the more widely disseminated is the Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation for the past 12 years. This year, as in numerous past years, it has declared Hong Kong the world's freest economy, closely followed by Singapore, with Iceland, Ireland and Luxembourg close...

Chapter I THE ACTORS ON THE REVOLUTIONARY STAGE Dear Mr. President: I am in sympathy with the Soviet form of government as that best suited for the Russian people... Letter to President Woodrow Wilson (October 17, 1918) from William Lawrence Saunders, chairman, Ingersoll-Rand Corp.; director, American International Corp.; and deputy chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York The frontispiece in this book was drawn by cartoonist Robert Minor in 1911 for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Minor was a talented artist and writer who doubled as a Bolshevik revolutionary, got himself arrested in Russia in 1915 for alleged subversion, and was...

SBC Communications, the second-largest regional phone company in the nation, is in talks to buy AT&T for more than $16 billion, according to executives close to the negotiations. A deal, if reached, would be the final chapter in the 120-year history of AT&T, the first technological giant of the modern age and the original model for telecommunications companies worldwide. A deal would be a reunion of sorts, putting back together some of the largest pieces of the Ma Bell telephone monopoly, which was broken up in 1984. The talks, which the executives described as "fluid" and "very, very sensitive"...

<p>How many companies sell computer software? How many companies sell telecommunications services?</p> <p>The answer to the first question is tens of thousands, and the answer to the second question is thousands. Both industries are clearly highly competitive. Competitive markets are a goal of economic policy. Hence the government ought not to be concerned about software and telecommunications, yet it is engaged in destructive meddling.</p>

September 19 saw the inauguration of the "China-Europe Global Navigation Satellite System Technical Training and Cooperation Center" (CENC) in Beijing to train staff and organize bilateral exchange for the Galileo project, an independent European satellite constellation that will rival the US military's domination of the Global Positioning System (GPS). This marks the beginning of China-Europe cooperation in the project, and the news was immediately relayed by foreign media and drew world attention. Only Americans know precisely the position of any object on the earth, other countries only know "roughly" What is the Galileo project? Let's start from the Global Positioning...

Most good universities have at least one conservative professor on campus. When, for example, some group at Harvard wants to hold a panel discussion on some political matter, it can bring out the political theorist Harvey Mansfield to hold up the rightward end. At Princeton it's Robert George. At Yale it's Donald Kagan. These dissenters lead interesting lives. But there's one circumstance that causes true anguish: when a bright conservative student comes to them and says he or she is thinking about pursuing an academic career in the humanities or social sciences. "This is one of the most difficult things,"...

Monopolies are generally thought of as "bad." Most of the time, they don't serve the public interest and they are incredibly inefficient. And yet, there is one monopoly in America that affects every college student -- the liberal monopoly on professorships. Recently, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture conducted a survey on professors' political views at universities nationwide, including Penn. The results were astounding. Among those Ivy League professors surveyed, 64 percent considered themselves either liberal or somewhat liberal. A mere 6 percent considered themselves conservative or somewhat conservative. In addition to this, 84 percent voted for Al...

Iraq wasn't the only one recently facing a countdown from a man named Powell. Competition in the vital telecommunications sector faces one, too. Just as Secretary of State Colin Powell has said time is running out on Iraq, his son, Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell, has promised to meet a largely self-imposed Feb. 20 deadline for issuing new rules governing wireline telephone services. But will it be a case of like father, like son? Most press reports say not. Secretary of State Colin Powell wisely has refused to accept the false promises of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that he...

Voluntary Alternatives to Taxation Stuart K. Hayashi Most Americans believe paying taxes is a patriotic duty. Yet this very nation was founded upon people evading taxes in 1776. When individuals don’t pay taxes, the government goes after them with guns, even though they haven’t used force on anyone else. Thus, taxation is an initiation of physical force against the individual’s right to life, liberty and property. Because taxation is forcible extortion, it violates your right to property. If you don’t pay taxes, you can be jailed, hence depriving you the right to liberty. And if tax “evaders” fight tax...

The Wall Street Journal today reports that Chairman Michael Powell will ask the FCC to vote early next month on changes that would force competitors to pay the giant Bell companies higher rates to lease lines - "a move," write Journal reporters Yochi J. Dreazen and Shawn Young, "that could reduce competition and price-cutting in the local phone market." There's no "could" about it. If the FCC goes ahead on Powell's plan, the huge gains that consumers have scored in the past year will be erased, and the chances for a high-tech recovery will diminish. If there is one...

Canada: Romanow commission report says private health clinics should go OTTAWA (CP) - In a properly funded public health system, there should be no need for private clinics offering MRI scans or minor surgery, the Romanow commission said Thursday. Growing reliance on private diagnostic services "is eroding the equal access principle at the heart of medicare," said the report, which urged governments to reconsider the practice of sending workers' compensation cases to private orthopedic clinics for fast-track surgery. "Rather than subsidize private facilities with public dollars, governments should choose to ensure that the public system has sufficient capacity and is...

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The local telephone industry's financial woes have become a tool in an intense lobbying campaign for deregulation. The fix being sought by the industry: Elimination of rules that require companies like SBC Communications Inc. to lease elements of their networks at deep discounts to competitors that are entering the local telephone service market, like AT&T Corp. or WorldCom Inc. . But regulation isn't the sole cause of SBC's decline in net income last quarter, says David Loomis, an economist at Illinois State University who previously worked for Bell Atlantic, now Verizon. Regulation isn't the only reason...