Legal System

Closely linked to the issue of gay marriage is the issue of gay adoption. The subject raises the stakes in the current national controversy, and, as usual, state intervention complicates the picture enormously.

In Portland, the restaurant chain Pizza Schmizza offered to pay homeless people a slice of pizza, soda and a few dollars in exchange for holding a sign for 40 minutes on downtown sidewalks that read: "Pizza Schmizza paid me to hold this sign instead of asking for money." Ralph Nader didn't like it one bit.

The guild system possesses a superficial plausibility, which gives it what attractiveness it may have among market critics left and right. But consider how a guild system must work in practice. The logic of the guild is such that certain people who wish to enter a particular trade are denied entry.

Whether we look at the very sketchy circumstantial evidence, the fiduciary duty argument, or the proprietary information doctrine argument, none of these arguments can justify the prosecution of Martha Stewart. The prosecution of Martha Stewart and others before her is nothing more than the reflection of the growing anti-capitalistic mentality in our society that Mises warned us about.

One cannot discount the role of politics here. In the end, we could have a well-known person owning a felony record and being sentenced to prison and a once-prosperous company in tatters. We will see some federal prosecutors being feted as though they had just solved the Case of the Century. These are dark times, indeed, for the pursuit of justice in the United States of America.

If there is a solution, the market will find it long before the politicians will. Spam filters have dramatically diminished the problem relative to what it would otherwise be, and these have been provided solely by the pressures of commerce. The efforts to certify ISPs and police the web for spammers, entirely a private undertaking, are ongoing. The methods that work will last and those that do not will be discarded. 

As we observe the current frenzy of lawyers preparing to sue McDonald's and Burger King—and even suing Kraft Foods, the maker of Oreos—for allegedly causing their clients to suffer from obesity, we cannot help but wonder what lunatics have taken over the U.S. legal system.

Something happened in Buffalo, New York, that contradicts the propaganda of those who support "gun control."

Shopping at a mall, joining a country club, or working for a business are not rights. Remember that before you get angry at not being able to stay at the mall, not being able to play golf at Augusta, or not getting hired because you don't look the part. In order for something to be taken from you or denied to you, it must be yours in the first place. 

The Supreme Court, in its recent cross burning case, simply fails to understand that the First Amendment, and the other amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, is rooted in the protection of private property rights. Ignoring this point leads to absurdities, writes Adam Summers.