|  Donald
J. Boudreaux's resume includes positions at two of the most celebrated
organizations in the libertarian movement: The Foundation for Economic
Education (FEE) and George Mason University.
At FEE, an Irvington-on-Hudson, New York-based research center that
promotes individual freedom, private property, limited government, and
free trade, Boudreaux served as president from 1997 to 2001. Since 2001,
he has served as chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason
University -- a Fairfax, Virginia institution that is known worldwide
for its libertarian scholarship.
Previously, he was an associate professor of Legal Studies and Economics
at Clemson University (1992-1997) and an assistant professor of Economics
at George Mason University (1985-1989). He has also lectured in the
United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe on a wide variety of
topics, including the nature of law, antitrust law and economics, and
international trade.
In all his activities, Boudreaux promotes the idea of "true self-government."
In Ideas on Liberty (September 2000), he explained what he
means by that phrase: "Each individual governs himself. Each person
is free to chart his own life's course, choosing which risks to brave
and which to avoid. Each person has a claim to the fruits only of his
own labor and sacrifices, and no claim to the fruits of another's labor
and sacrifices. Each person has a legal right to do as he wills so long
as he respects the equal rights of others and honors all his commitments."
Unfortunately, in modern America "each of us is ruled to an increasingly
large degree not by ourselves, but by others," he continued. "Consider:
regulations mandating that we wear seat belts; minimum-wage legislation;
government restrictions on drug use; state blue laws; truancy statutes;
the regulation of advertising; tariffs and other import restrictions;
...building codes; occupational licensing; the command that every worker
contribute to the Social Security and Medicare schemes; taxation that
consumes around 40 percent of our income; the list of offenses against
self-government is endless."
Boudreaux has contributed to the books The Causes and Consequences
of Antitrust: The Public-Choice Perspective, edited by Fred S.
McChesney and William F. Shughart II (1995), Taxing Choice: The
Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination, edited by
William F. Shughart II (1997), and The Voluntary City: Choice, Community,
and Civil Society, edited by David T. Beito, Peter Gordon, and
Alexander Tabarrok (2002).
In addition, his essays have been published in The Wall Street Journal,
Investor's Business Daily, Regulation, Reason, The Washington Times,
The Journal of Commerce, Cato Journal, and in scholarly journals
such as the Supreme Court Economic Review, Southern Economic Journal,
Antitrust Bulletin, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking.
-- Bill Winter |
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Quotable
"Classical-liberal
(or, if you prefer, libertarian) political values are no more than the
application to society at large, and to government, of some of the most
fundamental and indispensable rules that every decent person learns
early in life and adheres to until death. What are these rules? Keep
your promises. Tell the truth. Don't take other people's stuff. Don't
hit other people. Following these rules might not guarantee happiness,
but you're guaranteed to be miserable if you reject any or all of them."
-- Donald J. Boudreaux in Ideas on Liberty (December 2000)
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