The Afghanistan mission — VOICES for REASON

Subscribe

• Subscribe to VfR by email
• VfR updates via Twitter
• Entries (RSS)
• Amazon Kindle edition
• Facebook

Latest Posts

• Panelists to discuss landmark Citizens United case
• Businessmen vs. Pseudo-businessmen
• Justice Holmes awakens
• Hit the brakes on government health care
• Currently reading: Nothing Less than Victory
• Here we go again
• Climate science unraveling
• Are corporations creatures of the state?
• Shut up, we want to regulate you
• ‘Heresy’ at Energy and Environment conference

Authors

• Alex Epstein
• Debi Ghate
• Don Watkins
• Elan Journo
• Jeff Scialabba
• Keith Lockitch
• Onkar Ghate
• Tom Bowden

Tags

Archives

• March 2010 (3)
• February 2010 (13)
• January 2010 (18)
• December 2009 (25)
• November 2009 (23)
• October 2009 (22)
• September 2009 (22)
• August 2009 (25)
• July 2009 (23)
• June 2009 (24)
• May 2009 (20)
• April 2009 (31)
• March 2009 (29)
• February 2009 (30)
• January 2009 (7)
• December 2008 (1)

Featured Selection

• Economic power vs political power

  

  In her 1961 Ford Hall Forum lecture "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," Ayn Rand makes a critical distinction between economic power and political power.

  Economic power, she explains, "is the power to produce and to trade what one has produced." Since one cannot force others to buy one's good or services, economic power "can be achieved only by . . . the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who participate in the process of production and trade." Political power, on the other hand, is the fact that government "has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice." Thus the nature of economic power is voluntary, while the nature of political power is coercive.

  Understanding the difference between economic power and political power--and the dire consequences of equating them--is necessary to a proper understanding of government. You can listen to the entire 1962 lecture, along with the Q&A that followed it, at the Ayn Rand Multimedia Library.