Tibor R. Machan

Tibor R. Machan
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Machan@chapman.edu

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Name: 
Tibor R. Machan
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Tibor Machan is a professor of business ethics and Western Civilization at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and recent author of Neither Left Nor Right: Selected Columns (Hoover Institution Press, 2004).  He is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

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Columns by Tibor R. Machan

Another Tragedy of the Commons
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-19 15:00
Bush"s Swagger and Iraqi Freedom
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-15 15:00
The Feudal and Socialist Nature of Taxation
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-15 15:00
Communists Given Unearned Sympathy
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-12 15:00
What is gross and, actually, quite shameful is when, say, The Los Angeles Times assigns the task to one of its staff writers, Susan King in this case, to do a very friendly write-up of someone who reportedly had been an avid supporter of everything Soviet and communist in his life but has, of course, done a thing or two in the movies that may be quite admirable. In this case, Mr. Dassin'who is...
Journalism, Competition and Objectivity
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-10 15:00
Whenever a controversy breaks, some will argue that too many journalists fail to be objective and let their partisan loyalties color their reporting. When the topic has international significance, the issue of objectivity even overshadows certain newsworthy topics. Many journalists become defensive and start focusing not on what they are supposed to be covering but on whether their coverage is...
Welcoming Versus Blocking Innovation
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-08 15:00
One need not await yet another multimillion dollar study to learn that the Internet has improved efficiency in innumerable areas of human productivity. What is not so widely appreciated, judging by all the complaints one hears about outsourcing'taking jobs that have been done in a given location and relocating them someplace else where labor is less expensive'is the incredible volatility that...
Were the Founders Libertarian?
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-01 15:00
In the fall 2001 issue of The National Interest, Francis Fukuyama writes in response to my brief statement of the meaning of the term 'natural rights,' namely, that 'properly understood, [they] are liberties, spheres of personal authority within which one does as one judges fit-even if it may be unwise, imprudent or cowardly-and others must gain entrance by permission. Fukuyama responds that 'Mr...
If It Really Were Their Money
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-04-01 15:00
A famous theory about taxes has it that wealth belongs to society and taxation merely determines how much of it the citizenry may use. This is what is argued in The Myth of Ownership by co-authors Thomas Nagel and Liam Murphy (Oxford, 2002). You and I do not own even our labor. It belongs to society and government is in charge of telling what we get to use and what remains in its coffers....
"We Are Shocked, Shocked!"
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-26 16:00
Here is a topic on which I have some personal feelings'the success of Richard A. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (Simon & Schuster, 2004). Clarke is today's liberal democratic hero since he has come out attacking President George W. Bush for the latter's alleged failure to properly prosecute the war on terror. Despite having earlier defended Bush'Clarke...
Replacing Arguments with Name Calling
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-25 16:00
Rush Limbaugh has claimed that the modern liberalism of Ted Kennedy & Co. is dead in the water as far as arguments are concerned. I am not sure this isn't true also of modern conservatism, a la George W. Bush'are there really any arguments in support of Bush's bloated big government 'compassionate' conservatism? Limbaugh seems to be right about the demise of arguments for modern liberalism'I...
Responding to a "Review"
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-25 16:00
That venerable magazine, Publishers Weekly, ran a review of my book, Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature's Favorite (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). It is a mean-minded short little thing that looks to me was meant to bury the book, especially since Amazon.com published it in full next to where the work is described. Here is what Publishers Weekly said: 'This cranky manifesto opposes the...
Were the Good Old Days Free?
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-22 16:00
It pains me when some of my fellow loyal champions of liberty speak as if liberty were something in America to which we could perhaps return. As if those good old days were rife with individual liberty across the land. Well, the country may have had a few more favorable speeches promoting individual liberty, yes. That is one thing that I do miss'we didn't only hear a few vapid words in support...
Revisiting and Expanding the Laffer Curve
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-17 16:00
The Laffer curve is about how much imposition or other types of trouble people are willing to tolerate from their fellows. Arthur Laffer, a professor at the University of Southern California, is supposed to have drawn a bell shaped graph on a napkin once to show that up to the peak point of it people are likely to put up with the burden of taxation. The peak isn't the same for everyone, but...
"Government" vs. "State"
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-14 16:00
Concepts such as that of 'government,' like those of 'democracy,' 'law,' 'justice,' 'freedom' and 'love,' to cite just a few, is what W. B. Gallie, called 'essentially contestable' (see his "Essentially Contested Concepts", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 56 [1955-56]). I heard the characterization from Alasdair McIntyre back in the mid-70s at the Creighton Club, the New York State...
On Navigating Mixed Systems
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-14 16:00
Over the years attending libertarian meetings I have always been a bit uneasy about folks in attendance who think being forced to wear helmets while riding motorcycles or having to wear seatbelts in cars are central libertarian issues. They are and aren't. For starters, the real issue, one that only a few directly touch on, is whether the roads of a free society are to be public. If they ought...
Why Animal Rights Don"t Exist
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-13 16:00
Since 1991 I have been arguing about animal rights and liberation. It came about because I wrote a paper, 'Do Animals Have Rights?' after learning that a colleague, Tom Regan, had had a book prominently published by University of California Press, The Case for Animals Rights. I had been writing on natural rights theory since I did my doctoral dissertation on the topic, and so I thought I needed...
Is Morality Illiberal, Un-Libertarian?
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-12 16:00
In his book Getting What you Want: A Critique of Liberal Morality (Routledge, 1998), Robert Brecher chides classical liberals and libertarians--in a civil tone and with considerable respect--for their subjectivist theory of values. This is the idea we find often expressed by economists to the effect that whatever it is that's of value to a person achieves its status in virtue of the person's...
Business Mini-Malpractices
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-11 16:00
You probably know this'when you champion the free market, your critics often unleash ad hominems like, 'Hey you are just an apologist for big, greedy business, so shut up.' As if this amounted any kind of argument. (I suspect such retorts are meant to make one feel bad, that's all'a kind of punishment for disagreement!) I need, however, to assure these critics now and then that I have absolutely...
Some Further Causes of Outsourcing
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-11 16:00
All over the country some employees face this situation: Although they have deliberately refused to join a labor union, the federal government is forcing them to pay union dues on the grounds that they are benefiting from high wages unions allegedly have achieved for not just their members but for all the workers where they are employed. How else could they send letters to these non-union...
I Get Letters!
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-10 16:00
These days when one publishes and makes one's email address available, one is likely to receive posts of all kinds, very positive and pleased, even grateful, or, alternatively, courteously negative as well as out and out hostile and insulting. My plethora of recent pieces on job outsourcing, job losses, CEO pay, free trade policy and such, from my normative political economic perspective'rather...
Is the Right Kind of Liberalism Coming Back?
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-10 16:00
Many folks tend to know this'the label 'liberalism' or 'liberal' has been hijacked over the last century so that now it means something that's a 180 degree opposite of what it originally meant. This is why 'libertarianism' or 'libertarian' had to take over, because the former somehow managed to come to mean 'welfare statism' or 'welfare statist' in American political parlance. The reason may...
Martha Stewart and Her "Crime"
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-09 16:00
Let me start by noting that I am no expert in SEC regulations. The law isn't my area of concern here, ethics is. Did Martha Stewart do anything morally or ethically wrong? What did she do? What we know of is that she had sold stock in a company that was about to go bust before anyone else but some of her close pals knew this. We don't know how she came to decide to sell, whether it was because...
Prejudice Against Business
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-09 16:00
With all the talk about media bias it may be worth noting that nearly all news services treat malpractice-'or even just the whiff of it-'at business corporations with much greater severity than malpractice'-even the blatant instances of it'-at universities and, well, the news media. I am thinking her of the vehemence with which everyone in the press descended upon corporate commerce in general...
Forcing Some to Make Others" Jobs Secure
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-08 16:00
If you wish to come up with examples of support for vile policies by government, all you need to do is keep your eyes on the letters and Op Ed pages of The New York Times. The latest of these beauties appeared in The Magazine section, March 7, 2004, where the writer proceeds as follows: "But not all jobs are created equal. Working in a unionized factory with good pay, affordable health care...
Liberty and Freedom of the Press
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-04 16:00
How annoying is it that journalists scream bloody murder whenever anyone goes near their liberty to scribble on endlessly about anything they like, in any form they prefer, with whatever illustrations they favor, but have no compunction about calling for government to meddle in everyone else's profession? Prior restraint is forbidden by law where the press is concerned but not where all the...
Religion, Culture and Law in Free Societies
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-03 16:00
Among those who champion and want to live in free societies there are people of widely different convictions on many issues. They may indeed share but one conviction among them. This is that the law's task is to defend our individual rights to live as we choose so no one is authorized to make us live differently. Obviously, living as we choose to live means doing so where we are in charge-'in...
George Soros"s Betrayal
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-01 16:00
This man is a puzzle to me. He left Hungary back in 1947, just managing to escape both the Nazis and the Communists, ending up at the London School of Economics and learning his philosophy and politics, if you can call it learning, from Karl Popper. He became a devote but, paradoxically, not a very critical one for someone who was taught to think by Popper, the advocate of critical rationalism...
Collectivist Thinking Is Rife in the USA
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-03-01 16:00
The proclivity of some people to think in terms of collectivism, right here in these United States of American, is baffling to me. This is the country that was founded on the principle of individual rights-'everyone has them to, among other things, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The announcement of this, in the US Declaration, follows the teaching of the great classical liberals,...
America and the Right to Private Property
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-29 16:00
It was the jurist and Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who stated in a historic dissenting opinion that "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics," which is to say that free enterprise is not demanded by the provisions of the US Constitution. He added, 'the constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of...
Wrong Response to "Loss of Jobs"
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-25 16:00
In recent months I have penned a few missives on the topic of job security and 'job outsourcing,' and these have prompted quite a few readers to respond with a variety of their own inputs. Some have been very supportive and welcoming of the free market analysis I champion, but a rather large group has sent me anything from extremely nasty, vitriolic creeds to thoughtful objections. Now my policy...
The Federal Government Isn"t Needed to Preserve Marriage
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-24 16:00
It is really getting out of hand, and those perpetrating it know it quite well. Just look how President Bush felt the need to square the circle here, when he mentioned that 'America is a free society, which limits the role of government in the lives of our citizens' but then added, 'This commitment of freedom, however, does not require the redefining of one of our most basic social institutions...
"But Americans Aren"t Getting the New Jobs"
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-23 16:00
For me the hate-filled outcry that jobs are leaving the country-'however convoluted that concept really is'-has always called to mind the fact that many who voice it are also supposed to be humanitarians. I have in mind the likes of Ralph Nader and Dick Gephardt, champions of the downtrodden, enemies of big corporations, you name it. Those on the Left, at least, who worry about jobs are...
Science in the Service of Power?
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-23 16:00
In our times science is certainly on top of everyone's list for credibility. Science, as one might say, brings home the bacon'-none of the technology that makes life easier, safer, more comfortable, more productive, more entertaining than it has ever been could flourish without the enormous contribution of science. It is no accident that virtually every area of human concern likes to label...
Imperialism, Left and Right
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-22 16:00
No, I am not talking about foreign policy. My concern is with how both Left and Right seem to have their straightjackets into which they want everyone to be strapped, like it or not. It is disturbing in part because a high point of the American way of life has always been the 'live and let live' principle. And the USA, with its substantial commitment to the principle of private property rights...
Loss of Jobs Bogeyman
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-18 16:00
This morning I took out the trash. It is now picked up almost completely mechanically'-the truck drives by, stops, and the driver pushes a button that makes mechanical arms reach out and pick up the huge container and lift it in the air and dump the contents in with the rest that's been picked up around the neighborhood. Oh, but what a crime this is. I recall when three or four people ran...
A Libertarian Quarrel
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-15 16:00
Within the USA, there has always been a relatively strong libertarian voice, in contrast to most other countries. And within the libertarian movement, two strands have quarreled in a civil but not altogether gentle tone. I have in mind the argument between those who believe in limited government'-usually called minarchists'-versus those who want no government at all'-called anarchists. (This...
Socialism, Bush Style
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-15 16:00
Compassionate conservatism always was a fraud, but just how straightforward a fraud it is can be seen from recent statements from Bush Administration officials. Why was it a fraud to start with? Because government cannot-'yes, literally, cannot'-be compassionate toward people with other people's money. You, I, our friends and neighbors can be compassionate, in the sense that we can consider...
Gay Marriage Hysteria
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-15 16:00
After the Massachusetts Supreme Court legally validated the idea of a gay marriage for that state ' but as a matter of Constitutional law, for any state in the USA'-conservatives like Rush Limbaugh had a conniption fit. First there came to feigned shock-'reminiscent of Claude Rains in Casablanca vis-'-vis gambling going on at Rick's'-with the court's making law. As if this were the first time...
Misplaced Honor for Politicians
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-12 16:00
When my son was in elementary school, once they had some kind of special event, celebrating the achievements of various students ' I can't recall just what the festivities were all about. What I do recall vividly is that the principal had invited a local politician to head up the feast, to make a key note address, some kind of inspirational speech for the kids. Not being one who stands idly by...
Explanations and Lies About North Korea
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-09 16:00
The BBC World News reported recently on North Korea's devastating food shortage problem. Some six million human beings are at the brink of starvation there! In this report viewers were told that the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency, stated that 'the food shortages are due to a decline of donations.' Now there is a distortion if one has ever run across one. It is a distortion by...
Politicians" Rhetorical Ploys
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-06 16:00
It is the right time now to check in on how politicians and their staff try to hoodwink us all. It isn't just candidates but a great many public policy celebrities who resort to various ploys-'as when they are asked about how they would handle this or that eventuality, and they decline on the grounds that they do not deal with hypotheticals. And it is all balderdash. Fact is, hypotheticals are...
Primary Jitters
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-04 16:00
Although I still track what happens on the political front, check in with some of the stump speeches just to be sure there isn't some good news that will surprise me, the process, I must admit, is frightening me. For someone who came to the USA very hopeful about citizenship in a free society, this is a big disappointment. It is also of great concern that despite all the proliferation of...
George Will: Conservative Welfare State Champion
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-02-02 16:00
Many moons ago, when I was doing interviews for Reason magazine (with the likes of Bill Buckley, Edward Teller and Milton Friedman), we tried to get one with George Will who had just gotten his lucrative gig with Newsweek magazine (I think it was $75,000 for his weekly column he was just starting to pull down back in the 70s). He would agree, then cancel, agree, then cancel again, usually a day...
Filthy Rich vs. Filthy Poor
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-01-30 16:00
Over the years I've written a lot about the virtue of liberty-'one of my books has that as its title, in fact'-yet even among many of my readers who find my arguments sound and my conclusions appealing there are many who don't seem to be able to shake their disdain for the rich. So, even lovers of liberty often think of the rich as they might of prostitutes'-sure, it's wrong to stop them, but...
BBC Troubles: He Who Pays the Piper
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-01-30 16:00
The British Broadcasting Corporation is often regarded a model civil service outfit which, despite its near total reliance on government funding, prides itself on being independent of government influence. That is the myth. The reality is different. Just how different it is can be seen from the current flap over the so called Hutton Report, an assessment of the BBC's reportage and opining...
Some Further Thoughts on Government Regulation
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-01-29 16:00
In several forums, including one long book, Private Rights and Public Illusions (The Independent Institute, 1995), I have argued that government regulation is unjust, a policy unbecoming of a free society. Government regulation is a form of prior restraint, meaning, the legal authorities take aggressive action against citizens before they have done anything that deserves such action. A...
Imperialism the Left"s Way
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-01-27 16:00
Over the last couple of years I've been steadily opposed to the American government's war in Iraq, not because there is anything good about the regime that was in power there but because the job of US troops is to defend our rights from aggressors. Pre-emptive attacks then, even against very bad guys, are wrong (although it would be OK for volunteers to join rebel Iraqis to overthrow the tyrant...
Does Liberty Serve Selfishness?
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-01-27 16:00
Where I publish my columns there tends to be considerable sympathy for the idea that individual liberty is the primary public good'-protect it and the law has done its business. All the rest is mortar work. I also read much correspondence addressed to me or to others who publish on these forums, including in the newspapers that run my columns, and one of the charges that is repeatedly leveled is...
Logic, Liberty and Reality
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-01-26 16:00
There is a principle in logic that goes like this: Once a contradiction has infected an argument, anything can follow. Another way of putting it is that once a viewpoint has contradictions in it, nothing reasonable can be expected from it except accidentally. When one discusses politics, a charge frequently leveled is that one's views aren't realistic but too purist, too idealistic. Champions...
A Misguided Attack on Choice
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Tibor R. Machan 2004-01-25 16:00
In both, his book on the subject, The Tyranny of Choice (New York: ECCO, 2004), and his January 22, 2004, Op Ed piece for The New York Times, "A Nation of Second Guesses," Professor of psychology Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College disparages the belief that human beings are better off in life when they have a greater selection of what they might choose from than when such a selection is...

 

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