Articles in English

• Marshall on Depressions (The Barstool Economists, September 2, 2009). In his Principles of Economics (1920), Alfred Marshall perhaps says about depressions everything that needs to be said – in just a few paragraphs.
• Welcome to the Club, Mr. Mulroney! (Western Standard, May 22, 2009). All of a sudden, out of the blue, we are criminals.
• Arresting 185,925 Canadians (Western Standard, April 8, 2009). It is impossible to enforce a liberticidal law with means that are consistent with a free society.
• The Origins of the Economic Crisis (Montréal Economic Institute, March 6, 2009). The actual economic crisis points more to government failure than to market failure. Also available in a French version.
• Christmas Eve of 2051 (Ottawa Citizen, December 24, 2008). The on-going recession was not helping the Statemas tree shortage. All this mess, assured a PCO report, "is due to deregulation and laissez-faire."
• The Brave New World of Stimulus (Financial Post, December 19, 2008). "Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches." It's all in Huxley's Brave New World.
• A Dangerous Profession of Faith (Ottawa Citizen, November 4, 2008). Living in Québec must be a privilege granted by our national and collective state.
• What Deregulation? (Financial Post, October 30, 2008). We should take seriously Alan Greenspan’s apparent admission that he had underestimated the self-regulating capacity of financial markets.
• No Free Financial Lunch (Financial Post, October 22, 2008). Shouldn't the federal government purchase all credit instruments from private financial institutions?
• Public Health Insurance Under a Non-Benevolent State (Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Fall 2008). This paper explores the consequences of the oft ignored fact that public health insurance must actually be supplied by the state.
• A Crisis of Global Statism (Financial Post, September 20, 2008). In the U.S., we basically had financial socialism with a human face.
• May's Costly War on Poverty (Financial Post, September 10, 2008). The Green Party's virtuous guaranteed annual income is not exactly a brillant idea.
• Listeria Hysteria (Financial Post, September 5, 2008). If anybody were able to stop accidents, it would be government bureaus like the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
• Looting the Tobacco Companies (Financial Post, August 6, 2008). Black markets always develop when the state tries to ban or severely restrict something consumers want.
• Navy Should Stop Playing Rambo (National Post, August 2, 2008). I have a simple solution for the Canadian navy's alleged lack of resources.
• Bombardier's Gain is the Taxpayer's Loss (Financial Post, July 23, 2008). Bombardier’s executives may have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to rob the taxpayers.
• A Man Defending His Castle (Ottawa Citizen, July 21, 2008). The two armed men met in the bedroom doorway, in the dark, a few feet from each other.
• If it Quacks Like a Politician... (Ottawa Citizen, May 8, 2008). Anything is good if it saves only one duck's life.
• The System Works (Financial Post, April 29, 2008). A great opportunity exists to take our distances from the old and inefficient American model of securities regulation.
• My Resistance Against the Police-Bureaucratic Complex (for CUFOA's newsletter, April 20, 2008).Will I be the first Canadian to be jailed for refusing to tell the state about his love life?
• Resolution for 2008 (Pulblished on this site, December 30, 2007). Here is my New Year’s resolution, which I would also like to recommend to my readers.
• A Nation of Licence Holders (Ottawa Citizen, December 17, 2007). This is the state in all its glory: crushing some individuals in order to please others.
• Becoming the Hunted (Ottawa Citizen, November 8, 2007). A cattle registry is hiding behind the so-called "gun registry".
• Global Value Chains for Canadian Taxpayers (Publlished on this site, September 25, 2007). Hear about Québec wheat and Industry Canada's conferences on value chains for Canadian taxpayers.
• A CRTC for Québec Groceries (September 23, 2007). Québec events sometimes suggest a prediction: in a few decades, the province will have imploded, merged into Ontario, or Vermont, or New Brunswick.
• Hollow Goddess of Productivity (Financial Post, August 22, 2007). Pious sermons to businesses for not investing enough and not being good girls are meaningless.
• Totalitarian Toddlers (August 17, 2007). Here is what happens when totalitarian toddlers (the Youth Commission of the Québec Liberal Party) try their national and collective hand at social engineering, and try to write about in French.
• Black Verdict Was Sadly Predictable (Ottawa Citizen, July 14, 2007). The conviction of Lord Black under at least one major charge was easy to predict: I wrote this article, and sent it in, before the verdict was announced.
• June 23: A Disturbing Anniversary (Pulblished on this site, June 23, 2007). Why has this tragic event of just six years ago been so rapidly forgotten? Perhaps because it brings to light so many absurdities in the public perception of gun controls. [Also available in a French version]
• Alcoholic Actions Speak Louder (Financial Post, June 12, 2007). As for the public monopolies, like the SAQ or the LCBO, they continue sucking their two breasts (my apologies for the hyperbole, I must have seen too many Educ’alcool ads): control and money.
• Searching for Googlenopes (May 27, 2007). Inspired by the challenge, I tried to find Googlenopes, and found it very easy.
• Virginia Tech (April 16, 2007). When you live in a society where madmen are intent on massacring defenceless students, including young women, there is no panacea.
• Capital's Punishment (Western Standard, October 9, 2006). The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the ideal of many proponents of a monopolistic security regulator here, but it is not an example to follow.
• The Traffic Jam (Western Standard, September 25, 2006). The problem with cheap surveillance of everybody by the state is that there will be more of it the cheaper it is.
• Stunting our Growth (Western Standard, September 11, 2006). Never has citizenship been such a revered fetish, at the very time when citizens, in any meaningful sense of the word, have become beggars, licence carriers, and photo-ID clowns.
• Social Welfare, State Intervention, and Value Judgments (The Independent Review, Summer 2006). Why it is not true that wealth has to be created before it is redistributed.
• It's Us Against the Dismal Scientists (Western Standard, August 28, 2006). Public choice economics assumes that these politicians and bureaucrats are ordinary individuals who are no less self-interested than people who sell lectures or potato chips.
• A Land of No Means by No Means (Western Standard, August 14, 2006). Empty political incantations serve the interests of different gangs of would-be rulers.
• We're All Walking Time Bombs (Western Standard, July 31, 2006). Fortunately, every four years, a warp in the space-time continuum makes these potential madmen suddenly—albeit for only a few hours—enlightened enough to elect soft, altruistic, caring masters.
• The Good News about Oil (Western Standard, July 3, 2006). Think crude prices can only increase on? Don't bet on it.
• Sticking to Their Guns (Western Standard, June 19, 2006). So the battle is waged by state apparatchiks, their busybody supporters often financed by the state itself, and an oppressed minority.
• Dissenters from the Drug War (Western Standard, June 5, 2006). With men like John Gayder and his colleagues at LEAP, there is some hope for the future of our liberties.
• Penal Envy (Western Standard, May 22, 2006). If the punishment for smuggling guns or tobacco gets as high as for murder, what will the rational smuggler do when he is caught by a customs cop on an isolated, dark road?
• Change for the Worse (Western Standard, May 8, 2006). Many old liberties have become new crimes.
• Fugitive Radio (Western Standard, April 24, 2006). Jeff Fillion doesn’t realize it’s not his machines the state would go after, but him personally.
• Democratic Drift (Western Standard, April 10, 2006). This is not just theory, the process has already started.
• Identity Crisis (Western Standard, March 27, 2006). People will beg to be tagged, and the rulers will gladly oblige.
• What It Means to Be Civilized (Western Standard, March 13, 2006). On the Danish cartoons affair -- but even in England, the modern cradle of free speech, the country of Milton and Mill, people are now prosecuted for speech crimes
• What Voters Want (Western Standard, February 27, 2006). The incentives of the bureaucrats and the politicians automatically feed the growth of Leviathan.
• The OECD Drift (The Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter, February 21, 2006). From an innocuous and rather useful free-market-oriented economic and statistical shop, the OECD has become a promoter of global diktats.
• The Three Witches (Western Standard, February 13, 2006). There was a time in this fair land when Leviathan did not run loose.
• No Pity for Pettigrew (Western Standard, January 30, 2006). Don’t count on me to shed tears on a minister downgraded to a simple victimized citizen, after being an accomplice to a state that has spent a few decades crushing the individual’s right of self-defence.
• The Problem with "Freedom Indexes" (The Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter, January 25, 2006). In the U.S., so many business executives are going to jail that perhaps repression will have to be outsourced to China.
• Statistics Indicate Gun Control Only Increases Crime (The Gazette, January 22, 2006). The way things have been going, we will soon have a Coalition for the Control of Everything.
• Clobbering Hobbies (Western Standard, January 16, 2006). Just as law-abiding citizens who have bought legal, thus registered, handguns since 1934 were wondering how they could have been such suckers...
• The Most Canadian Province (Western Standard, December 26, 2005). French-Canadians were an unruly crowd, as were their coureurs des bois ancestors.
• Ottawa's Spectator Sport (Western Standard, December 12, 2005). The typical voter booed as everybody booed, but the boos died when the game started again.
• Doctors' Orders (Western Standard, November 28, 2005). The labcoats need to be educated in criminology, economics, history, and about our traditional liberties.
• A Land of the Free (Western Standard, November 14, 2005). Vive l'Alberta libre!
• The Man Behind the Mask (Western Standard, October 31, 2005). As George Jonas says, multiculturalism needs to be enforced by the love police.
• The Banality of Business Ethics Codes (Financial Post, October 20, 2005). If business ethics codes do not help promote the Western concept of individual liberty and dignity, what are they for?
• The Path of Greatest Resistance (Western Standard, October 17, 2005). To restore our liberties, more harassment and sabotage acts are needed.
• Why the State Does What It Does (Western Standard, October 3, 2005). To understand what the state does, one needs a theory of the state.
• One Cheer for the Boot Heel (Western Standard, September 19, 2005). The summer of 2005 was business as usual around Ottawa, our “City of Command,” as Bertrand de Jouvenel called the seat of “the Minotaur.”
• Bike Protectionism (Financial Post, September 7, 2005). Political efficiency requires another rule: give the most politically powerful the right to produce the bikes and screw the consumer.
• The More Inefficient the Better (Western Standard, September 5, 2005). The Ménard report reminds one of a fabulous scene of Denys Arcand's film The Barbarian Invasions.
• Commodity Myth (Financial Post, August 30, 2005). There is no reason to fear Chinese demand pushing up resource prices.
• The New World Border (Western Standard, August 22, 2005). The state was not always that interested in sniffing people’s underwear.
• Oil Price Mirage (Financial Post, August 19, 2005). Apart from price spikes during times of crisis, the price of crude tends generally downward. [See a slightly different version (with sources) published as the Daily Article on the Ludwig Von Mises Institute's website.]
• The Anti-Capitalistic Inquisition (Daily Article, Von Mises Institute, August 15, 2005). Modern inquisitors fail to grasp that a competitive business is not a government bureau.
• That's Entertainment (Western Standard, August 8, 2005) People are rationally ignorant of politics. They are mainly looking for political entertainment, and this is what the media gives them.
• In Defense of Bribery (Daily Article, Von Mises Institute, August 7, 2005). If DaimlerChrysler has paid bribes to foreign officials as a cost of doing business, the company should be congratulated, not prosecuted.
• Tyranny in China Doesn't Justify Tyranny Here (Financial Post, August 2, 2005). Arguing otherwise would be like saying that, since the Chinese are not free, our own state should oppress us equally ­- an equal playing field, as it were.
• Pressure, Not Progress (Western Standard, July 11, 2005). Strangely enough, as opposed as they are to a “two-tier health system,” the dissenting judges don’t mind a two-tier legal system.
• Big Brother, Inc. (National Post, July 15, 2005). All Canadian employees of Computershare must provide their fingerprints, as well as other personal information, to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• Your Papers, Please (Western Standard, June 27, 2005). ID papers came from Europe to the U.S., and from the U.S. to Canada.
• In Defence of the French (National Post, June 9, 2005). Collectives like "the French," "the Quebecers," or "the Ontarians" are only rough and dangerous generalizations. But if we agree to play this collectivist game, the French aren't that disgusting.
• Worse than Prostitution (Western Standard, June 13, 2005). To say that Belinda Stronach is a whore would be slightly misleading, for all politicians are.
• Can We Trust the Conservatives? (Western Standard, May 30, 2005). Every government, whether “liberal” or conservative, has contributed to the sedimentation of government powers up to the monstrous Leviathan under which we now live.
• A Fund for Profit Activists (Financial Post, May 26, 2005). Executives are as incompetent in battles of ideas as they are efficient at producing goods and services.
• Becoming the Hunded (Western Standard, May 30, 2005). On a brisk, starry autumn night, Jean-François Laflamme stopped his old, rusted Jetta in the brightly lit parking lot of the village church in Saint-Wenceslas...
• A Licence to Steal (Western Standard, May 16, 2005) Despite this analysis, let them go to jail.
• Outlawing Preferences (Western Standard, May 2, 2005). There is not much difference between standard assaults on private property and the anti-smoking jihad—or, for that matter, other attacks on minorities, like gun owners.
• Failing to Rise to the Challenge (Western Standard, April 18, 2005). Regarding the Conservative Party convention in Montréal, I don’t want to be nastier with my distant friends than with my close enemies.
• The Wrong Response to Rochfort (Western Standard, April 4, 2005). Each time somebody blows a fuse, the state jumps on the opportunity to increase its power and crush everybody’s liberties.
• When It Comes to GDP, 2 - 1 = 2? (Financial Post, March 17, 2005). Presenting imports as a subtraction from GDP conveys the wrong impression that they are bad for the economy.
• Lifestyles of the Tacky and Vulgar (Western Standard, March 14, 2005). Moral coercion is tyrannical and divisive.
• No Ethics in Boeing Sex Firing (Financial Post, March 10, 2005). It’s not the ethics, it’s the cops, stupid!
• Saving the Children (Western Standard, February 28, 2005). If children understood the world, they would realize that the state is their worst enemy, leading them straight into the Brave New World.
• Turning Bhutanese (Western Standard, February 14, 2005). The most crucial question of our time and, I would say, in the whole galaxy, is: what will be the first smoke-free society?
• What True North Strong and Free? (Western Standard, January 31, 2005). At least during the twentieth century, virtually all types of government intervention started in the U.S. many years, sometimes decades, before being imported into Canada
• Prosecuting the Chrétien Regime (Western Standard, January 3, 2005). As unconceivable as it may now seem, couldn’t the same happen to Chrétien or Rock as is now happening to Pinochet? OK, I may be too optimistic.
• Drug Use in the Workplace (Western Standard, December 20, 2004). What have these CEOs been smoking?
• Government Deficits Matter, Others Don't (Financial Post, December 15, 2004). The concept of current account deficit exists mainly to justify state intervention and the arbitrary borders it imposes.
• Defending Decentralization (Western Standard, December 6, 2004). There is a strong economic argument in favour of decentralization in general, and federalism in particular.
• The Firearms Act and the Charter (Western Standard, November 22, 2004). When we don’t make use of our rights and don’t resist when Leviathan questions them, we signal that we have none.
• Socialized Medicine (IBL Occasional Paper, November 10, 2004). As Bismarck suggested, socialized medicine leads people to consider the state a benevolent big brother. [Also available in an Italian version, and a French version]
• Engineering Obedience (Western Standard, November 8, 2004). Armed in the forest with no ID papers! No crappy licence, no gun registration certificate, no pleasure craft operator card, no driver’s licence, no social insurance card, no citizenship card, no medicare card, no hunting licence, no nothing!
• Trading Freedoms for Security (Western Standard, October 25, 2002). The main consequence of DNA fingerprinting would not be to take away the liberty to commit crimes, but to give the state the capacity to create new crimes.
• The Public Choice Revolution (Regulation, Fall 2004). Except in an abstract constitutional perspective (agreement on very basic rules), the political “we” implies that some individuals impose their preferences to others.
• The Price of Resisting Gun Tyranny (Western Standard, October 11, 2004). The Ontario Provincial Praetorians (called the Ontario Provincial Police in Newspeak) also arrested Bruce’s wife, Donna, and spent the whole weekend occupying and searching the family house.
• Free Conrad; Seize the Securities Regulators (Western Standard, September 27, 2004). The low-life statocrats at the SEC (and their imitators at the OSC), as well as those in the U.S. criminal witch-hunt system, have put their noses in the case.
• The SEC Does'nt Want the Truth to Get Out (Financial Post, September 22, 2004). The Securities and Exchange Commission is the new Ministry of Truth.
• Canada's Broken Health Care System (Ripon Forum, Fall 2004). The American system is far from ideal, but the reason is that it is too socialized and regulated, not because it needs more government intervention.
• Think the Nanny State is Oppressive? Meet Big Mother (Western Standard, September 13, 2004). No compromise with equality: police personnel should be 100% female.
• The Nanny Monster (Financial Post, September 10, 2004). Whether the state a benevolent institution or a Leviathan that will try to screw the poor and sick, private health care should nob be forbidden.
• CHOI Should Ditch the Eight-second Delay (National Post, September 3, 2004). The court should vindicate free speech and throw the CRTC-imposed "Canadian values" in the garbage cans of history, and the CRTC with them.
• Censorship Doesn't Protect Canadian Values (Western Standard, August 30, 2004). There can be no Canadian values if some Canadians are forbidden to express theirs.
• Robbery, Québec Style (Financial Post, August 26, 2004). Elementary, my dear Watson. The clerk is legally obliged to render a “judgment” that “shall be equivalent to a judgment.” Why wait if you know that the accused are guilty?
• Wrong Wavelength (Financial Post, August 11, 2004). Yielding before CHOI’s freedom of expression would hopefully bring the collapse of this Potemkin village of artificial, state-imposed, anti-liberty “Canadian values.”
• Elections Are a Lousy Way to Run a Country (Western Standard, August 2, 2004). In fact, Martin has no mandate from any voter, except perhaps among his court intellectuals and close apparatchiks.
• Protecting Everyone's Liberties Is the Only Way to Protect Our Own (Western Standard, July 19, 2004). It’s a war between -- let’s say the words -- tyranny and liberty.
• Blasphemy on Election Night (Exclusive to this site, June 28, 2004). What's the difference between the Conservative Party and a cunt?
• Antismoking Types Are Waging a Holy War (Western Standard, June 28, 2004). Tobacco should be classified under the fifth precept of Buddhism, "Suramerayamajjahpamatthana."
• Plumber Economics (Financial Post, June 24, 2004). His own interests, as a trade union apparatchik, are aligned with the mercantilist establishment’s interests, against consumers, taxpayers and poorer workers.
• Gag Laws Control Your Property (Canadian Conservative Review, Spring 2004). What if the state could tolerate public opinion noise that serves its information purposes, and forbid threatening opinions?
• The Public Health State (MD Canada, May-June 2004). From the caring state to social engineering and tyranny, the slope is steep and slippery.
• Resisting a Bad Law (The Gazette, June 16, 2004). Guns are not "meant to kill": if they were, cops would not be allowed to have them as they are granted no licence to kill. Guns are for self-defence and protecting liberty.
• Monopoly on Trial (Financial Post, June 9, 2004). In the Supreme Court, the monopoly’s defenders claimed again that a parallel private system would threaten the viability of the public system.
• Political Homogeneity & How to Hide Expenditures (Financial Post, May 21, 2004). A different explanation views “public opinion” as an ill-defined mix of unstable minority views, and the state as a power hungry redistributive machine with a momentum of its own.
• The War on Terror is Nothing Compared to the War on Our Rights (Western Standard, May 17, 2004). On September 10, 2001, our Western states already had much too much power.
• Bill C-250 Could Be Used to Gag Anyone (Western Standard, May 3, 2004). I am ready to fight for Robinson's right to do what he wants with what he has between his legs, but this assumes that he is willing to defend my own liberty to do what I want with what I have between my ears.
• Canada's 'Free' Health Care Has Hidden Costs (Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2004). The hidden costs include the poor quality of services, and the costs imposed on customers (aptly called “patients” in this case) who have to wait in queues.
• When Regulators Run Loose (Financial Post, April 16, 2004). Officially restating earnings is a quite recent obligation, imposed by the Ministry of Truth -­ pardon me, by The Regulator.
• A Knock on the Door in the Night (Le Québécois Libre, April 15, 2004). I considered taking my revolver with me, but it was "safely stored" (as they say in Newspeak) in my gun cabinet.
• What the Conservative Party Needs to Learn is How to Repeal Laws (Western Standard, 12 avril 2004). Don't add, don't amend, don't replace. Repeal. R-E-P-EA- L.
• Freedom, Property Rights, and a .22 (Western Standard, March 29, 2004). If some people are willing to trade their dignity for $60, I am not one of them.
• The Running Dogs of the State (Le Québécois Libre, March 20, 2004). Bureaucrats must realize that they are responsible for their collaboration in destroying our traditional liberties. If they don't understand, we are completely justified to "denormalize" them.
• Disarm the Cops, Or Else (Le Québécois Libre, February 7, 2004). The original New York situation is the normal one: as a humble servant, the cop goes unarmed, while the sovereign citizen-master faces no such restriction.
• Canada: The Land of the Free (Financial Post, March 19, 2004). Looking to emulate the U.S., the Canadian government has been trying hard to create an equal playing field of tyranny.
• Let's Have Equal Treatment for Political Insiders (Financial Post, March 11, 2004). There is no reason why, in 10 years time, we shouldn’t have as many politicians in jail as business executives.
• Cut Spending $20-Billion (Financial Post, February 28, 2004). Let's talk about grants to researchers, artists, individual do-gooders, state propagandists and other favourites of the regime.
• Smash the State, Not Microsoft (Financial Post, February 26, 2004). The Economist is calling for the state to break Microsoft. I would rather have Microsoft break the state.
• Now It Seems We Need a Passport Inside Canada (Globe and Mail, February 5, 2004). “I swear,” said a friend of mine and former cop who works in the federal Parliament, “we’re getting more like the Soviet Union every year.”
• Review of Kip W. Viscusi, Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Postmortem on the Tobacco Deal (The Independent Review, Winter 2004). Kip Viscusi’s book will remain a monumental testament to the massive fraud that antismoking crusaders and their puppet states have perpetrated against the citizenry.
• Warning: The Public-Health State Can Kill You (National Post, January 9, 2004). ThePublic-Health State wants to help some individuals to get healthier at the expense of other individuals' health, this much we know.
• Following the Herd (Regulation Magazine, Winter 2003-04). Cascade theory explains why a lot of people can be wrong. When incorrect cascades develop, bad public policy will follow.
• Remembering Pierre Trudeau, the Statocrat (Le Québécois Libre, December 20, 2003). As life becomes more politicized and more conflictual, naming and especially renaming public places after dead rulers becomes more controversial.
• Watch Out for Politically Correct State-talk (Financial Post, December 5, 2003). In George Orwell's 1984, the power of Newspeak is that it does not permit to articulate thoughts against the established order.
• It's in the State's Interest to Retain Megacity (The Gazette, December 4, 2003). "If the opponents to the Montreal amalgamation believe that Jean Charest will just rescind the law," I wrote on March 2, 2002 in Le Québécois Libre, "they are in for a rude awakening." My prediction is, alas, being realized.
• I Come Not to Praise Paul Martin (Canadian Conservative Review, Fall 2003). So, on November 5, 1985, I brought our guest to Mr. Martin's office...
• Medicine as a Business (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, October 27, 2003). When profits are officially suppressed and are bulged towards the apparatchiks, the incentives to satisfy consumer demand diminish.
• International Social (In)Security Net (Financial Post, October 3, 2003). Nice fantasy land, until one realizes that the so-called "social dialogue" requires the cops to stand by.
• Escape from the Mac Cult (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, September 22, 2003). "But wait for System Five [or whatever]!" they kept repeating. Hare Khrisna, Hare Krishna.
• Crackdown on Jaywalking Shows We Have Too Many Laws. (The Gazette, September 17, 2003). If all the laws on the books were enforced, the average citizen would soon realize he is living in a soft tyranny.
• Herd Behavior and Public Information (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, September 1, 2003). Cascade theory vindicates old classical liberal ideas about the importance of unpopular free speech, and of independent social elites capable of resisting public opinion and the state.
• Health Care's Hidden Costs (Financial Post, August 28, 2003). In the short-run, the only efficient solution to the problems of the Canadian system would be to legalize private health insurance.
• Why Everybody Thinks Alike (Financial Post, August 21, 2003). Cascade theory is relevant to many business phenomena, including management fads, adoption of new technologies and innovations, and the important issue of product reputation.
• Junk Economics (Financial Post, August 6, 2003). They see the economy "losing steam" as if it were a Via Rail/Bombardier locomotive.
• Paper Criminals Confess Serious Crimes (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, July 14, 2003). The resistance against the iniquitous Canadian firearms legislation by a courageous minority is an important landmark in the war against Tocqevillian soft tyranny.
• Law Now Favours Robbers and Oppressors (The Gazette, July 5, 2003). Law and order are to be maintained only for the benefit of robbers and oppressors.
• The Euro Vs. the Pound? (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, June 30, 2003). The British state should neither impose the euro, nor favor the pound. Let consumers choose.
• State Lies and WMDs (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, June 16, 2003). We can only hope that state legitimacy will in fact be undermined by the war in Iraq.
• Screw the Welfare State? (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, June 2, 2003). Translated from Newspeak, this means that the Welfare State has to become more and more bureaucratic, intrusive, and powerful, in order to survive.
• State Should Stop Trying to Set Value of Dollar (The Gazette, May 28, 2003). Monetary policy can build economic Potemkin villages; it cannot change the nature of the economic world.
• Beware Politicians Bearing Gifts (The Gazette, May 3, 2003). Jacques Parizeau or Jean Chrétien would have done much less damage as CEOs of Eaton's or Enron.
• Zundel's Crimes of Opinion (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, April 7, 2003). I am not necessarily suggesting that Zündel would make a good consultant for Health Canada or the EPA, but that he should not be persecuted for expressing his opinions.
• Does Vice Pay? (Financial Post, April 4, 2003). At least, when private investors jump on the ethical bandwagon, they do it with their own money.
• Taxpayers' Money up in Smoke (Financial Post, April 3, 2003). Taxpayers' money has been diverted from breast cancer diagnosis to the anti-smoking Jihad.
• The Case Against the London Congestion Charge (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, March 24, 2003). There are better libertarian battles to wage than reducing small inefficiencies by granting the state large powers.
• Activists Have No Idea What Bears Really Want (The Gazette, March 16, 2003). When soldiers begin to philosophize, I smell a rat -- if I may use the expression with due deference to our furry four-legged colleagues in beingkind.
• The Speech Ban Against Dr. Edward Hudson (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, March 3, 2003). On January 30, 2003, in an Ontario criminal court, I saw the tyrant. He was not in the dock.
• Business Subsidy Scam (Financial Post, February 26, 2003). To paraphrase Willy Sutton, Ford and DaimlerChrysler rob the taxpayers because that's where the money is.
• Guns and Economics (Tech Central Station, February 11, 2003). In 1998, the new Canadian gun-control legislation started coming into force, and the term "force" is not a figure of style.
• The Pros and Cons of Conspiracy Theories (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, February 3, 2003). For a good conspiracy, motives are not enough: the epistemology and the economics of it must make sense.
• Research Paper Up In Smoke (Financial Post, January 31, 2003). There is something rotten in Tobacco Kontrol.
• Loan Guarantees Are Mandatory Lotteries for Taxpayers (The Gazette, January 29, 2003). Bombardier has gone from a free-market entrepreneurial venture to a golden lame duck.
• End the Smoking Apartheid (Financial Post, January 29, 2003). The apartheid against smokers is turning nominally private spaces and businesses into de facto state property.
• The Gun in the Labourer's House (National Post, December 31, 2002). From those of us who are less brave, from those of us who believe in individual liberty, from our future descendants, these heroes deserve gratitude and praise.
• The Anti-Capitalist Witch-Hunt (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, December 23, 2002). The attacks against "unethical" corporations point mainly not to flaws in capitalism, but to state failures and to the continuing anti-capitalist witch-hunt.
• Why Should We Follow Rules? (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, December 2, 2002). Much of the art of social, and personal, life is about knowing which rules to follow and which rules to disobey.
• Should We Shoot Holders of Government Bonds? Hunting and the Common Opinion of Mankind (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, November 18, 2002). French Canadians have owned guns without having to ask permission for three centuries. Now, they must tell the state about their burnouts and love deceptions every five years
• This is Freedom? (Financial Post, November 2, 2002). The problem is whether a simple index can really measure economic freedom.
• Of Derivatives and Rabbits (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, October 21, 2002). I thought of running upstairs to get my shotgun, which I had illegally left on an IKEA chair in the library (gosh! the Canadian tyrant is not going to like this).
• Tobacco Kontrol (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, October 14, 2002). There is no Cunningham paper on anti-tobacco expenditures published by the Canadian Cancer Society, notwithstanding the citation in Tobacco Control.
• The Customer Is Always Rude (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, October 7, 2002). In a free market, the supplier defers to the customer; in a socialist system, it is the contrary.
• Political Economy of the War on Terror (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, September 30, 2002). The so-called "war on terror" is, in fact, a war of the state on what is left of our traditional Western liberties.
• Cheong Sing, a Useful Smuggler (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, September 23, 2002). If the only thing Cheong Sing has done wrong was to smuggle oil, cars, tobacco and cellphones into China, and to neutralize bureaucrats by putting them in bath tubs with prostitutes (poor girls!), he should be congratulated.
• Give Me Libertarianism (Financial Post, August 29, 2002). Most libertarian economists believe that a limited state is necessary but, when the chips are down, they are closer to anarchistic liberty than to state authoritarianism.
• Don't Forbid Capitalist Acts Between Consenting Adults (Financial Post, August 15, 2002). The main trend since the 1980s has been for North American governments to impose increasingly stringent standards on the disclosure and circulation of financial information, and on the behaviour of market participants.
• Citizen Custody under the guise of State Protection (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, July 1, 2002). Costody protection of the "war on terror type is especially useful to protect the state against its own citizens.
• The Ultimate Enron (Financial Post, June 25, 2002). The citizens are the formal shareholders of the state, but no one can sell his shares and bailout. The state is the ultimate Enron.
• Poverty Policy, a Power Ploy (The Gazette, June 16, 2002). The State has another agenda than fighting poverty.
• Changing the Québec Political System (Le Québécois Libre, June 8, 2002). A political system which is only flexible upwards in terms of state power, and where new ratchets are devised each time it reaches a new plateau, is dangerous.
• Explaining the State (Paper given at the Youth 4 Liberty Summer Camp, Orono, Ontario, May 25, 2002, and reproduced in the Laissez Faire Electronic Times, June 10, 2002). What is wrong with the state is that it uses coercion to operate redistributions for the benefits of certain clienteles against other individuals.
• The Political Advantages of Financial Privacy (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, April 22, 2002). The political advantage of financial privacy is not that people may secretly do what the law permits; financial privacy is much more revolutionary.
• Why Do People Smoke? (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, April 8, 2002). The short answer is, because they like it. The long answer is that it is rational for them to do so, given their preferences, including their rates of time preference, and given their own circumstances in life.
• It's the Fat Police (Financial Post, April 6, 2002). The Canadian Fat Minister wants to social-engineer the people into the land of the thin and the obedient.
• Confessions of a Resister (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, May 13, 2002). Armed resistance is not an idea that should be entertained lightly, but...
• Banking's Best-kept Secrets (Financial Post, March 25, 2002). The banks can't have both the benefits of being private businesses serving their customers, and the privilege of being an obedient component of the state's surveillance system.
• The Enron Craze (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, March 25, 2002). There is no need for standardized norms that stifle diversity, experimentation, and discovery. (This is a more elaborate version of the March 16 Gazette piece, "Bush Overreacts to Enron.")
• Bush Overreacts to Enron (The Gazette, March 16, 2002). The Enron craze has one function: to increase state power over nominally private corporations.
• The (civil) servants rule (The Gazette, March 11, 2002). When one voter out of five belongs to a class intimately tied to the fortunes of the state, we can say that elections are rigged.
• Regulating Against the Rich and the Poor (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, March 11, 2002). How the Canadian nationalized health system and the feds' firearm controls impose higher costs the more productive you are.
• How to Make Tobacco Crawl (Ottawa Citizen, March 9, 2002). The more the tobacco pariahs seem to crawl, the more they are trampled down by the statists.
• Why Liberty Has So Few Defenders (Le Québécois Libre, March 2, 2002). Few sources of independent, non-state support, and few large personal fortunes probably explain why there is so little lively libertarian activity in Québec and Canada.
• In Praise of the Unknown Tax Evader (Financial Post, February 27, 2002). Under our present states, tax evasion benefits everybody, tax evader or not, and a statue should be erected to the unknown tax evader.
• Is the State Shrinking? (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, February 25, 2002). During the last two decades, the state increased its expenditures and, more conspicuously, its networks of monitoring, surveillance and control. Reproduced in the Québécois Libre, March 16, 2002.
• Who's Served by the Public Interest? (Financial Post, February 20, 2002). The securities regulators are defending not the public interest but the private interests of some special groups.
• Princesse Mathilde and the War on Terror (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, February 11, 2002). The statocrats will see no use in wrath, for it can be directed only against peaceful citizens or against their nice government. They will privilege apple-pie citizens over rednecks.
• Carnets de Voyage on France and America (Laissez Faire Electronic Times, February 4, 2002). Like the typical American, the typical Frenchman is persuaded that his country is the cradle, and the modern incarnation, of the rights of man
• Robert Nozick Put Statists on the Defensive (The Gazette, January 26, 2002). Without Robert Nozick, the great statist brainwash of the 20th century would have been even more irresistible.
• SALSSO Bars in Ottawa (Exclusive to this site, January 12, 2001). Bars for Smokers And Lovers of Secondhand Smoke Only are forbidden under penalty of violence in Ottawa. Rebels are fighting tobacco whiteshirts.
• Big Brother Wants to Be Loved? (Laissez Faire City Times, December 17, 2001). More people start hating the state. They often have good reasons to.
• There Are No Predators (Ottawa Citizen, December 11, 2001). The fox of the state is already in the henhouse of air travel, but this is no argument to give it still sharper teeth.
• Government Power Grab Continues (The Gazette, November 19, 2001) The overgoverned appear ungovernable, and the easiest solution, from the state's viewpoint, is to restrict political competition.
• The World Bank's Tobacco Economics (Regulation, Fall 2001 - pdf file, 206 k). Creative analysts want us to believe that perfect states can replace imperfect parents.
• Escape from the Logic of War (Exclusive to this site, September 18, 2001). Any freedom loving individual wants the guilty and their accomplices, whoever and wherever they are, “dead or alive,” as George Bush said. But we must escape from the logic of war
• Letter to John Manley (September 18, 2001). Where an horrible crime is confessed.
• How Much Security (Exclusive to this site, September 14, 2001). All pilots are licensed and all airliners registered. Airplanes and air terminals have been transformed over the past decades into enclaves of total citizen surveillance, control, and impotence.
• The Lessons of Terrorism (Laissez Faire City Times, September 17, 2001). One doesn't buy peace by giving up liberty.
• Economic Imperialism (Laissez Faire City Times, September 3, 2001). The economic analysis of law is concerned with the efficiency of legal rules.
• Book Review: Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism by George Soros (Ideas on Liberty, September 2001). This book shows that billionaire financiers don’t necessarily understand the first thing about economic systems.
• 10 Supplementary Larose Recommendations (Exclusive to this site, August 25, 2001; supplement to Pierre Lemieux's Gazette op-ed of this date). As a demonstration of social solidarity and shared vision, we have supplemented the Larose Report with the following recommendations, very much in the spirit, if not the language, of the other 149.
• Language is a Matter of Individual Choice (The Gazette, August 25, 2001). The Larose commission, our collective mouthpiece, uses a fascinating mix of politically correct jargon and statist pidgin of the 1960s.
• Hussein's and Rock's Blood (Exclusive to this site, August 24, 2001). Allan Rock is at least as willing to sacrifice himself for his people as the Saddam Hussein is.
• Guns and Lovers (Laissez Faire City Times, August 20, 2001). A praetorian who had phoned me one week before, and whose call I had not returned, phoned again on that day.
• Label Ban a Smokescreen for Government Agenda (Financial Post, August 17, 2001). Politicians and bureaucrats have more incentives to lie than private businesses. From a historical point of view, lying is the health of the state.
• The Philip Morris Czech Study (Financial Post, August 17, 2001). After attacking smokers as a financial burden to non-smokers, anti-smoking advocates now claim that it is immoral to consider the contrary empirical evidence.
• The Cost of Law Enforcement ( Laissez Faire City Times, August 13, 2001). I am not sure that this implies forbidding the state to use computers, but it certainly requires forbidding official ID papers and state use of biometric identification.
• Democratization of Viruses (Laissez Faire City Times, August 6, 2001). Efficient mass transmission of viruses was, until recently, a near exclusive monopoly of the state. Fortunately, it has been democratized..
• WHO's Social Agenda (Financial Post, August 2, 2001). The government of Canada contributes about US$40-million to WHO's biennial budget (or US$20-million per year), making it the ninth largest contributor.
• An Unspeakable Contempt for Police Canada (Published on this site, July 31, 2001). "Police Canada" is the name we have to give to the cartel of state organizations that has brought administrative tyranny to this country over the last few decades. It's spear-head is now the infamous Canadian Firearms Centre.
• Hands Off the Currencies (Laissez Faire City Times, July 30, 2001). Contrary to popular belief, the choice of a currency isn't something that needs to be imposed by government.
• Regulatory Bullies (Financial Post, July 28, 2001). The assault on selective disclosure is just another junk-science type of witch hunt.
• Is Everything Optimal? (Laissez Faire City Times, July 23, 2001). Tautologically, saying that something is optimal means that it works in the only way it can work given all the environmental factors. Economists mean something else.
• Dollarization by Default (Financial Post, July 17, 2001). Contrary to popular belief, the choice of a currency isn't something that needs to be imposed by government.
• The Transparent Society (Laissez Faire City Times, July 16, 2001). Privacy is not a matter of prudishness, although it can be a matter of dignity. It is a question of limiting control.
• What Deregulation? The Avalanche Continues (Financial Post, July 5, 2001). A law-abiding citizen who wanted to read the new federal laws and regulations would spend more than one month on this task, full-time, every year.
• The Nice State (Laissez Faire City Times, July 2, 2001). Don't smoke, bring your guns to the police, and say nice things about people.
• Democracy Revisited (Laissez Faire City Times, June 25, 2001). To let such subhumans vote, the rulers must really think that voting is of no importance -- which, in the present system, is by and large true.
• Telling the State About Your Love Affairs (Laissez Faire City Times, June 11, 2001). Take away any sentiment of individual sovereignty, make individuals feel that everything of value to them is a privilege granted by the benevolent authorities. Which would be a more natural means to achieve these goals than for the police to question individuals about their love affairs or "behavioral problems"?
• WHO's Whiteshirts (Laissez Faire City Times, June 4, 2001). Suppose that there are some individuals who cannot reach a near "complete mental and social well-being" while they are ruled by the whiteshirts.
• Tyranny Laundering (Laissez Faire City Times, May 21, 2001). The concerted effort of the most powerful states in the world to fight victimless crimes and crimes against the state is nothing but an effort to hide an increase in their taxing and surveillance powers.
• Lip Service to Democracy (Financial Post, May 8, 2001). We will not get closer to the ideal of a no-passport world by establishing state cartels which, under the pretense of free trade, aim at monitoring and managing people's lives.
• Parent Licensing (Laissez Faire City Times, May 7, 2001). The project of licensing parents is symptomatic of the rise of the Sanitary State.
• The Tax Leviathan (Laissez Faire City Times, April 30, 2001). An important part of the taxes we are forced to pay actually produce "bads," not goods, at least for the invisible minority of individuals who want to be left peacefully alone.
• Free Trade Doesn't Require Treaties (Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2001). In FTAA debates as in other trade issues, a source of much confusion is the failure to realize that free trade is a consequence of individual sovereignty.
• Perfume of Prometheus (Laissez Faire City Times, April 23, 2001). Suppose that the law allowed special flights advertised for "Smokers and Lovers of Secondhand Smoke Only" (call them "SALSSO flights" for short).
• Violent Non-Violence (Laissez Faire City Times, April 16, 2001). The non-violence antitrade activists claim to use is meant to advocate violence.
• Why I Hate Children (Laissez Faire City Times, April 2, 2001). Children are born with social insurance numbers on their foreheads, medicare cards in their mouths, and cell phones in their diapers with direct snitch lines to the tyrant
• The Dangers of Tobacco Prohibition (Financial Post, March 19, 2001). “What has always made the state a hell on earth,” wrote German poet Friedrich Hoëlderlin, “has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven.” With David Kessler’s new book, all heaven is breaking loose.
• The Diminishing Returns to Tobacco Legislation (Laissez Faire City Times, March 19, 2001). The increasing size and aggressiveness of government warnings on tobacco products point to decreasing returns to regulation.
• An Interview with Pierre Lemieux by Carlo Stagnaro (Laissez Faire City Times, February 26, 2001). Simple citizens should have the right to possess the tools to commit a tyrannicide if it becomes necessary.
• Did God Quit Smoking? (Liberty Free Press, February 7, 2001). The World Health Organization is drafting God in the global Jihad against smoking.
• Letter to a Canadian Police Officer (Published on this site, February 7, 2001). Without the general support of law-abiding citizens, you would be nothing but a little rotten cop in a banana republic.
• Review of Robert Wright's Nonzero (The Independent Review, Vol. 5, No. 3 [Winter 2001]). After the state, what? Contrary to what Wright thinks, we do not need the Aztec inspectors "who prowled the urban markets in search of unscrupulous commerce," the value-added-tax legacy of Genghis Khan, and the international jack-booted fridge-sniffer thugs.
• If You See an OOglie, Call 911 (Ottawa Citizen, December 20, 2000). OOglies are apparently illegal in Québec because these toys speak only English. The cops are watching.
• Ottawa Wins a Jet Battle, But Canadians Lose (Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2000). To avenge what it considers unfair subsidies to the Brazilian aeronautical industry, the Canadian government is preparing to get even by punishing Canadian consumers.
• In Defense of Lai Changxing (Exclusive to this site, November 30, 2000). What horrible crimes this Chinese guy must have committed! Who would want to defend him? We do.
• Liberals Have Minority Rule (Ottawa Citizen, November 30, 2000). This gang made of 20% of the population should leave us alone. Let them pick their own pockets, and make, and enforce, laws for themselves.
• Democracy and the Economics of Politics (Liberty Free Press, November 21, 2000). Calling an election serves more to keep minorities in their place than to "consult the people," whatever that means.
• Let's Decriminalize Health Insurance (National Post, November 18, 2000). Strangely, or perhaps conveniently, the Canadian political debate on public health insurance has ignored the system’s fundamental feature.
• Where Have the Two Trillion Dollars Gone? (Exclusive to this site, November 2, 2000). Since Keynes's 1936 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, macroeconomics has been used to justify the intervention mystique and the idea that the state creates prosperity by digging holes in people's pockets.
• An Antigang Law Against Us (Liberty Free Press, September, 2000). In order to understand what is at stake in proposals for tougher antigang legislation, please forget for a moment what you learned in this great statist brainwash that was the 20th century "the century of the state," as Mussolini so rightly said.
• People Are Cows, Too (Liberty Free Press, August 15, 2000). People who believe in individual liberty are now the most threatened species. Let's defend at any cost the green fascists' right to speak. But let not the state trample on our liberties.
• Tobacco Companies Must Fight Back (National Post, July 18, 2000). Canadian governments also tend to import the craziest American fashions – just as, in Evelyn Waugh’s novels, African despots plagiarize the worst European ways.
• Three Scenarios for a So-called Law (Liberty Free Press, July 15, 2000). In one or two hundred years, historians will show only contempt, and school children will have only disgust, for the politicians and the bureaucrats who will have conspired to disarm and criminalize us.
• The Economics of Smoking (Liberty Fund's Library of Economics and Liberty, June 28, 2000). Why most economists arrive at conclusions opposite to those of the Public Health doctrine.
• Democratic Disagreement and Liberty (Liberty Free Press, June 17, 2000). Consider what democratic disagreement means in the case of the June 15 Supreme Court judgment on the Firearms Act.
• HRDC's Original SIN (Ottawa Citizen, May 19, 2000). Why all the fuss about the large database on Canadian citizens maintained by Human Resources Development Canada? For example, take my dog, Walden.
• CCRA: The Sniffing-dog State (Liberty Free Press, May 15, 2000). A government dog, litterally and figuratively, sniffing people's luggage is a good logo for the new American-style "Canada Customs and Revenue Agency."
• The Ontario Pledge: Guardians of the Banana Kingdom (Exclusive to this site, May 9, 2000). The Ontario government has thought of a good recipe for a citizenry of flag-waving, ID-happy, neckerchief-wearing, Cuban-looking guardians of the banana kingdom.
• Thank You, Commissar! (Ottawa Citizen, May 4, 2000). As required by law (so-called), I notified the police that I was moving...
• Government Packaging: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (Liberty Free Press, February 15, 2000). As my humble contribution to the Holy War of Public Purity, here are a few examples of the warnings and vivid graphics that should occupy 50% of government packaging, ads and forms included.
• Economics of the Smoking Debate (Exclusive to this site, January 21, 2000).On the occasion of the Non-Something Week, a little reflection is in order on the smoking debate.
• Heil Health (The Independent Review, Fall 1999; edited version reproduced in the Financial Post, October 2, 1999, under the title "Fascism and the Campaign to End Smoking"). The Nazis were our forerunners in health fascism, but we still have to learn the lesson. [Also available in an Italian translation]
• We Would Rather Have Simply Extortion (Exclusive to this site, September 24, 1999). It is less frightening to think that the U.S. government's suit against tobacco companies is simply extortion.
• Natural Rights or Utility? Inescapable Facts, Unavoidable Constraints (Liberty, May 1999). Consideration of both rights and consequences appears necessary for a defense of liberty.
• Health Insurance and Pistols (translated from Le Devoir, March 17, 1999). In his reply to the studies cited and the arguments advanced by Claire Joly, Marie Latourelle, Maryse Martin and Karen Selick in favor of self-defense and the right to bear arms, Robert Dôle only puts forward a few anecdotal odds and ends.
• Your Weapons Please (Liberty, March 1999). I replied to his letter, expressing my satisfaction that, at last, the people will be put in their proper place.
• Social Costs of Tobacco: All Smoke, No Fire (National Post, January 20, 1999). Virtually all economic studies over the past 20 years show that there is no net social cost of smoking.
• May I See Your Papers, Please (Liberty Magazine, February 1999). A short "Reflection" on why smokers should not have to identify themselves to buy cigarettes.
• Review of Jacob Sullum's For Your Own Good: The Anti-smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (The Independent Review, Winter 1998). "I hereby solemnly promise to abstain from the use of all Intoxicating Liquors as a beverage; I also promise to abstain from the use of Tobacco in all forms, and all Profane Language."
• Guns and Civilization: An Economist's Viewpoint (paper presented at the American Society of Criminology 50th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, November 12, 1998). There is no evidence that the right to keep and bear arms is inconsistent with a civilized society.
• The Voting Gamble (Liberty, September 1998). The chance that your vote will count in a democratic election is much less than one over the number of elementary particles in the universe. Why then do people vote? Should we trust the electorate with our life, liberty and property?
• U.S. Customs Cops (Exclusive to this site, June 6, 1998). American customs cops are more more intrusive with individuals they suspect of wanting to live under their administrative tyranny.
• Of French Caryatids and American Rednecks (Liberty, January 1998). Do free and self-reliant individuals have to be rednecks and bigots? Can we have both liberty and beauty? Please, government, help!
• Busted in the House of the People (Liberty, November 1997). What happened when, on August 28, I went to the Québec National Assembly to present a brief against ID cards, and... refused to provide any official ID to their praetorian guard.
• Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers (Liberty, November 1997). Another short and iconoclastic "Reflection" -- related to Lady Diana's death and eternal safety.
• The Right to Sleep and Bear Arms (Liberty, November 1997). A night with an armed woman: a "Reflection" on a subversive experience.
• Of Play and Money (Discourse, Summer 1997). How to make a fortune as a speculator: a review of Victor Niederhoffer, The Education of a Speculator (New York: Wiley, 1997). [A similar review in French was published in Le Figaro-Économie (Paris), February 20, 1997.]
• On Revolution: The Right to Smash the State (Liberty, September 1996). Is a revolution necessary to defend liberty? Is it feasible?
• Peace, Love, and Violence (Liberty, May 1996). Is violence possible in the Québec secessionist movement?
• Why We Need to Outlaw Statist Gangs (Exclusive to this site, April 6, 1997). The Québec Minister of "Justice" tried to explain "why we need to outlaw motorcycle gangs." In the process, he actually proved that we ought to outlaw the kind of statist gang he belongs to. Here is how.
• Farewell to the Canadian Way (Overview, National Citizens' Coalition, January 1997). Remember Canada 30 years ago? The "Canadian way" of resolving differences has all but been destroyed by mounting state power.
• Fascism and the "Distinct Society" in Québec (Exclusive to this site, February 22, 1997). Were there racist and fascist tendencies in Québec, in the 30s and 40s? How are they to be interpreted?
• King Chrétien Is Naked (Letter submitted to The Globe and Mail, February 17, 1996). What can we say about the Canadian Prime Minister personally manhandling a demonstrator in Hull, on February 16?
• Civil and Uncivil Disobedience (Liberty, July 1995). Would Henry David Thoreau have obeyed stop signs in Outremont, Québec?
• Partitioning the State: Some Basic Observations (Published in Research Memo, No. 68, February 5, 1996). In 1983, I wrote in my Du libéralisme à l'anarcho-capitalisme (Paris: PUF, 1983) that if Canada was divisible, so was Québec. In the wake of the present debate in Québec, here are some theoretical reflections on this topic.
• The Individualist Sentiment (Conference given at the Junto meeting at Niederhoffer and Niederhoffer, New York City, February 1, 1996; reproduced in Arms, Law & Society , No. 5 (Spring 1996), p. 1-18). Why Albert Jay Nock lived in Central Park, why Benjamin Constant had an emotionally tortured life, why Lysander Spooner could not marry the only woman of his life, why Georges Palante took his life with his revolver in 1925, and what distinguished Ayn Rand from the girl next door. [Also available in a Spanish translation]
• The Police as Public Enemy (First published on this site. Reproduced with authorization in Canadian Access to Firearms, November 1995). Is it possible that, in Canada, the police will come to be seen as public enemy?
• The Québec Referendum (Published on this site, October 30, 1995, 21:15 EST). What is the meaning of the secessionist referendum results?
• Auditing the Income Tax (Liberty, September 1995). What are the economic and moral justifications of income taxation, if not to increase state power?
• Academic Style (Liberty, November 1994). Anglo-American academic style has its advantages, and its pitfalls. Here is a two-paragraph parody. (Alas! one of its main features, PC language, is absent.)
• In Defense of Hate Literature (Exclusive to this site, Fall 1994, and published as Political Note No. 137, Libertarian Alliance, London, 1997 ). Sort of. What is hate literature? Baudelaire did much hate literature. So did Marx. Is Subversive Liberty hate literature? And what has the state to do in what we say or hear?
• The Québec 1994 Election (Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1994). The election that brought the separatist party back to power was a contest between different brands of statism.
• On Tyranny (Gravitas, Spring 1994). Tyranny in Canada? You must be joking -- like most of the liberal theorists who had feared, or forecasted, what is now happening.
• Canada's Taxing Pols Outwitted by Underground Economy (Wall Street Journal, April 8, 1994). What happens when government prohibits innocent vices.
• In Support or Tax Evasion (Globe and Mail, January 31, 1994). If Canadians in the underground economy were to start paying their "fair" taxes, government revenues and expenses would simply increase accordingly. So the underground economy is a useful restraint on Leviathan, and a benefit to all taxpayers. [Also available in an Italian translation]
• The real issues in gun control (Published in Le Devoir, September 2, 1992, and La Presse, September 8, 1992 -- translated and reproduced by Aim). An op-ed written in the wake of the Concordia killings by a madman. Perhaps this kind of article explains why I am not very popular with the Canadian establishment...
• Socialized Medicine: The Canadian Experience (Published in The Freeman, March 1989; reproduced in Politicized Medicine, Foundation for Economic Education, 1993). The Canadian health system is one of the most tightly nationalized in the Western world. How does it fare?