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.
We don’t have to have to be like Brady and have an absolute advantage to profit.
To survive, even the most successful companies have to be willing to quickly dispense with yesterday’s winning business plan
Trump’s cabinet appointments and the opposition to them reveals some important lessons for the role of interest group dynamics in the political process and its relationship to furthering a free and responsible society.
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 […]
Breweries will open as long as it is profitable. When taxes and regulations raise the costs of opening a brewery, we will see fewer of them.
One of the most egregious misunderstandings about trade is that the government of country A should allow its people to trade freely with peoples of other countries only if governments of, and producers in, other countries “play by the rules” – which usually means “plays according to the rules that the rulers and politically powerful […]
A president who truly understood Rand’s philosophy would not be cozying up to Putin, bullying companies to keep manufacturing plants in the United States, or promising “insurance for everybody.”
The first thing to clarify is what an interest rate is not.
How to evaluate the economic record of Barack Obama? To even begin answering, it’s necessary to go beyond just counting the number of jobs created during his presidency (10 million) or calculating the average growth rate (1.5%) or even looking at something more wonky like the labor force participation rate.
Imagine that you run a family daycare out of your home. You have no direct connection to the state government, but its bureaucrats decide that because you lack an “organized voice” as a profession, they’re going to appoint a union representative to speak on your behalf.
In today’s globally connected world with dynamic global supply chains for raw materials and inputs, and global marketplaces for final sales, it’s an economic fact of the modern world economy that: a) exporters are importers and b) importers are exporters.
Only individuals, separately or in voluntarily formed groups such as firms, trade; countries as such do not trade.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, bright and cheery, In the penthouse of my tower on the fifty-seventh floor — While I sat there, Donald Trumping, suddenly there came a thumping, As of someone gently bumping, bumping up against my door. “’Tis some immigrant,” I muttered, “coming in to clean the floor — […]
Calling education a public good is potentially dangerous.
The free-market concept is simple — private property owners should be able to preside over whatever policies they want.
Suppose that there are children throughout America who are utterly disengaged in their assigned public school each day, but that are absolutely riveted by the sports news on TV or YouTube each night. Suppose that at least one set of their parents realize their sports nut child is uninterested in school because it targets the instruction and examples to generic children.
“Perhaps the voucher movement ought to be called the ‘Make schools accountable to parents’ movement.” – Arnold Kling
Why is a model of education that is also profitable seen as such a bad thing?
Keeping most New Year’s resolutions involves incurring a high marginal cost on a regular basis in exchange for a minuscule marginal benefit.
“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.” — Adam Smith
The problem is that business experience does not automatically translate into good economic policy.
Making higher education free of charge won’t make it free to provide.