The Goal Is Freedom: In Praise of Profit by Sheldon Richman November 30, 2012 In the last two weeks, I presented a defense of key libertarian concepts — the market, private property, and competition — in a way intended to make them palatable to people who believe in individual liberty yet have something like an aesthetic aversion to the market economy. (See those articles here and here.) Today let’s examine profit, another ...
TGIF: The Virtues of Competition by Sheldon Richman November 23, 2012 When I discussed reasons to esteem the free market last week, I conspicuously left out any reference to competition. That might have seemed strange, but I did it because the subject deserves its own treatment. Differing attitudes about market competition divide people needlessly. An appreciation of what competition makes possible could prepare the ground for a convergence ...
The Misplaced Fear of “Monopoly” by Thomas E. Woods Jr. November 1, 2012 Those of us who get drawn, often against our better judgment, into Internet debates soon discover that the case against the market economy in the popular mind boils down to a few major claims. Here I intend to dissect one of them: under the unhampered market we’d be at the mercy of vicious monopolists. This fear can be attributed in ...
Meeting Frédéric Bastiat by Martin Morse Wooster November 1, 2012 The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Volume 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics, Jacques de Guenin, general editor, and Jane Willems and Michael Willems, translators (Liberty Fund 2011); 600 pages. Of all the great classical liberal thinkers, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) remains one of the least well-known. His works, of course, continue to be ...
An Economy of Illusions by Tim Kelly October 11, 2012 For the past four years, talking heads, pundits, and other regime apologists have been looking for “green shoots” and other signs of an economic recovery to vindicate the U.S. government’s fiscal and monetary shenanigans. So when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its report on October 5 showing the creation of 114,000 new jobs in September and a reduction ...
Destroying the Young with the Minimum Wage, Part 1 by Gregory Bresiger October 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 The minimum wage, a price control as futile as all other government price controls, continues to damage the U.S. economy and much of the world. But the obscene irony of the minimum-wage law is that it hurts some of the very people it is supposedly designed to help — young people seeking employment. The government’s ...
More Markets? More Government? Wrong Question! by Michael C. Munger September 10, 2012 Michael Munger is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the PPE Certificate Program. His primary research focus is on the functioning of markets and regulatory policies. His other work includes a variety of policy monographs and reports, for private organizations and government agencies at the federal, state, and local level. He has taught at Dartmouth College, University of ...
The Market and Uncertainty by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2012 Relying on the mass media for accurate economic analysis is like relying on a mobile home for shelter from a tornado. It’s a rather bad idea. Two items in the news demonstrate this beyond a shadow of a doubt: JPMorgan Chase’s big loss last spring and the role of private equity in an economy. It’s widely believed that JPMorgan Chase’s ...
Keynesians, Austrians, and the Continuing Economic Depression, Part 3 by William L. Anderson August 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Shortly after Barack Obama took office in 2009, he requested new spending of $800 billion to help “stimulate” the economy, and given that the Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, he faced little opposition. Soon construction workers were making highway repairs and digging ditches, and new signs ...
Obama, Romney Rhetoric Risks Trade War by Sheldon Richman July 20, 2012 When economic times are bad, animosity is directed at foreigners: “They’re taking our jobs!” So it’s unsurprising that the presidential campaigns feature charges and countercharges about outsourcing, the employment of foreign labor by American companies. This is a dangerous game because it sows the seeds of trade war. Economists understand the benefits of the division of labor. If you and ...
Government Shows Itself Impotent on Economy by Sheldon Richman July 11, 2012 It should finally have dawned on the American people that the politicians who presume to guide the economy have no bloody idea what they’re doing. We’re long past the time when knowledge of economics was required to see that the government is impotent when it comes to creating economic recovery. If you want evidence of that impotence, just look ...
Keynesians, Austrians, and the Continuing Economic Depression, Part 2 by William L. Anderson July 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The existence of business cycles — the boom-and-bust patterns — has puzzled economists. While Marx might have created a theory of why depressions occur, nonetheless there was nothing in Marxism to explain the boom period that preceded the bust. Furthermore, there was nothing in Marxism that could ...