The economy can’t be assembled like a jigsaw puzzle, as Boris Yeltsin learned on a trip to America.
The market can route self-interest toward the common good. But the market channels altruism better than the state too.
The first task of classical liberalism is to understand social order; normative conclusions must follow and flow from that understanding.
Any entrepreneur who succeeds in reducing costs faced by a laborer who suffers from a disability can earn a profit.
One of the signature features of President Donald Trump’s campaign was his hostility to free trade. Then-candidate Trump repeatedly denigrated various multilateral trade pacts as bad deals for the United States. Pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, appointing opponents of free trade—such as Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro—into key positions, and promises of tariffs that are likely to […]
Zoning and landmark laws have frozen much of New York into a life-size historical diorama: neighborhoods frozen in time, where the only thing that goes up is the rent.
Regardless of one’s position on eating meat, one can still care about not intentionally inflicting pain on animals.
Wouldn’t a fleet of supersonic aircraft overland create intolerable sonic booms that would rattle windows and scare livestock?
Among economics data watchers, a country’s exports enjoy a hallowed status. The ability of producers in country A to sell goods and services to people in other countries is taken as a sign of A’s economic strength, although the underlying metric for economic strength goes unmentioned. In addition, job counters across the spectrum constantly count […]
The hike to the summit of Mount Lafayette in New Hampshire’s White Mountains climbs a steep and rugged 3550 feet over 4 miles. The winter snows bury the rocks; and after a storm, snowshoed hikers pack the snow into an almost-smooth “herd path” that others can then hike with light crampons. Step off that herd […]
Prof. Deirdre McCloskey says commerce protects us because businesses know they can’t force customers to buy their products.
If human flourishing is our goal, we must return to a society where economic freedom is championed.
Capitalism—stronger than any border wall or immigration ban—remains a resilient and deeply American system.
Who does free trade help? Who does it hurt? And does it destroy jobs? Prof. Deirdre McCloskey breaks it down for you.
“The market is not a place, a thing, a collective entity. The market is a process, actuated by the interplay of the actions of the various individuals cooperating under the division of labor.” – Ludwig von Mises
Dr. Peter Jaworski says if it’s OK to do something for free, it’s OK to do it for money. But what about selling your own organs? What about selling slaves?
Zwolinski concludes his series on William Graham Sumner with the question of how we ought to help the poorest among us.
Zwolinski examines William Graham Sumner’s critique of “social justice.”
Not only is the charge of Sumner being a social Darwinist unfair, but it characterizes his views as nearly the opposite of what they actually were.
William Graham Sumner often gets unfairly labeled a social Darwinist. In this first post in a new series, Zwolinski tries to nail down just what “social Darwinism” means.
The problem with communitarianism is that many communitarians make for bad community members. Many of them are “society first, individual second!” to the point of being anti-social. They aren’t the kind of people you’d want to live near. Look, I get why people like community. I live in a fairly tight-knit community myself. We have little […]
One of the gravest economic mistakes that humans can make is to forget that ours is unavoidably a world of scarcity.
To survive, even the most successful companies have to be willing to quickly dispense with yesterday’s winning business plan
Free trade doesn’t just make us better off. It makes us better people. Donald Trump claims that raising barriers to trade is one of the things it will take to “Make America Great Again,” but he is wrong. Greatness—both of wealth and of moral character—comes from trade. And we have known this for a very […]