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Abstract:People have rights to the degree that they are willing to claim them and are able to enforce them, either themselves or through a third-party enforcer. This economic theory of rights is based on the rights people actually do have and are able to exercise, not the rights they should have based on some normative criteria. Natural rights theories and contractual rights theories are examined and found to be ambiguous as to the actual rights they imply. Furthermore, there is no assurance that people will actually be able to exercise any natural rights or agreed-upon rights. People's actual ability to claim and enforce rights is based on the economic and political power they have, which in turn is based on their ability to provide benefits to others in exchange for others respecting the claimed rights, and in some cases being willing to use force to make others respect them.

James M. Buchanan, a self-described classical liberal, had a research program extending more than half a century that was dedicated to analyzing -- and justifying -- collective action, including coercive action undertaken by governments. Buchanan's classical-liberal ideology rests firmly on a foundation of individualism, so it is interesting to analyze how his analysis moves from that individualistic foundation to a justification of collective action in which individuals are forced to comply with government edicts. The essence of Buchanan's framework is the idea that individuals can agree to be coerced and that the coercion they agree to furthers their own individual goals, including protecting them from having their rights violated by others. The author's analysis of Buchanan's constitutional calculus first looks at his individualistic foundation, then discusses the constitutional problem that Buchanan envisions, and, finally, analyzes critically some aspects of his constitutional calculus that may be at odds with his classical-liberal foundation. Adapted from the source document.

Crony capitalism is a term that has been used in the popular press, but rarely in the academic literature. However, when one understands crony capitalism as an economic system in which the profitability of business depends on political connections, one sees that a substantial body of academic literature explains its causes and consequences. The author's purposes in this article are, first, to demonstrate that the academic literature has analyzed crony capitalism's components for decades and that those components are well understood; second, to show that all of these components point toward big government as crony capitalism's cause; and, third, to consider ways in which crony capitalism can be controlled. Adapted from the source document.

Sometimes planning is designed to counteract market forces, revealing an adversarial relationship between planning and the invisible hand. Other times, planning builds on the spontaneous order of the market and the two will be allies. This article offers two related arguments on the division between top-down planning and the bottom-up planning produced by the spontaneous order of the market. First, planning as a whole has insufficiently appreciated both the effectiveness of the spontaneous order of the market and the difficulty of overriding it. Second, when one recognizes the way in which bottom-up planning creates an orderly outcome, one can see that governments have simultaneously planned too much of the affairs of market participants, but at the same time have insufficiently planned their own activities.

Economic policy analysts typically specify a model that describes an optimal outcome -- for example, an efficient allocation of resources, an optimal distribution of income, an optimal growth path, or an optimal macroeconomic outcome of stability with full employment and low inflation. Because economic models can become complex when they account for many things, all models employ simplifying assumptions to focus on one particular issue. Models that analyze policies to promote economic growth, for example, differ from models that describe the optimal distribution of economic or the optimal policy for internalizing an externality. When the invisible hand of the market fails, economic policy recommendations typically do not go beyond advising that the visible hand of government move the economy to the optimal outcome, without any detailed discussion of whether government action can achieve this outcome or whether public-sector actors have an incentive to implement the optimal outcome. Adapted from the source document.