Milton Friedman and I had our differences about foreign policy. I tried, in vain, to persuade him to be against the first Gulf war. Even there, thoug… - David R. Henderson

There are two main differences between Ponzi’s original scam and the Social Security system. The first difference is that Social Security is run by the government and, whatever its constitutionality and its questionable ethics, is legal. The second difference follows from the first: Whereas Ponzi had to rely on suckers, the government can and does use force.

Most people understand the right to property better in practice than in theory. This was vividly illustrated by economist Gordon Tullock in a class he taught at the University of Virginia in the late 1960s. An undergraduate student in his class said that there was no such thing as property rights;…. So Gordon grabbed the student’s wallet. The student asked him to give it back, figuring presumably, that his simple request would get him his wallet back. But Tullock refused, saying that if there was no such thing as property rights, how could he, the student, own this wallet that he claimed as his.

Our oil supply is secure, not because our government threatens to use force against those who would make it insecure, but because the world’s oil suppliers want to make money.