Tag: markets
Entrepreneurs create value for disabled workers.
March 24, 2017 | Post
Any entrepreneur who succeeds in reducing costs faced by a laborer who suffers from a disability can earn a profit.
Trump, Trade, and Great Power War
March 23, 2017 | Post
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 […]
Market demand is reforming farm ethics
March 10, 2017 | Post
Regardless of one’s position on eating meat, one can still care about not intentionally inflicting pain on animals.
The business case for supersonic overland
March 7, 2017 | Post
Wouldn’t a fleet of supersonic aircraft overland create intolerable sonic booms that would rattle windows and scare livestock?
Why sex work should be legal
March 6, 2017 | Post
The most straightforward reason to oppose the criminalization of the sex industry is that trading sex for money is not wrong.
How a telephone company used the government to monopolize an industry for decades
March 3, 2017 | Post
“Oh for the days of Ma Bell!” is not a lament we’re likely to hear. And for good reason. Before the breakup of AT&T, America’s telephone system was a government-sanctioned monopoly characterized by stagnant service offerings, high costs, and a glacial pace of consumer-facing innovation. So it was distressing when a federal appeals court engaged […]
Who makes the mountain paths? Freedom and the embrace of uncertainty.
March 1, 2017 | Post
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 […]
What America needs most right now is more economic freedom.
February 24, 2017 | Post
If human flourishing is our goal, we must return to a society where economic freedom is championed.
Baristas with BAs: The result of central planning for schools
February 23, 2017 | Post
Government school systems fail to provide different kinds of instruction as appropriate to different kinds of students in different places and times.
Will President Trump kill capitalism?
February 23, 2017 | Post
Capitalism—stronger than any border wall or immigration ban—remains a resilient and deeply American system.
Trade restrictions imperil our standard of living
February 17, 2017 | Post
“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
William Graham Sumner Part 2—The Rejection of Social Darwinism
February 12, 2017 | Post
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 Part 1 – Laissez-Faire and Social Darwinism
February 12, 2017 | Post
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.
“America First!” and Anti-Social Communitarianism
February 11, 2017 | Post
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 […]
Explaining the Protectionist Instinct
February 10, 2017 | Post
One of the gravest economic mistakes that humans can make is to forget that ours is unavoidably a world of scarcity.
You’re in Joseph Schumpeter’s economy now.
February 8, 2017 | Post
To survive, even the most successful companies have to be willing to quickly dispense with yesterday’s winning business plan
What interest rates really are and what happens when governments change them
February 1, 2017 | Post
The first thing to clarify is what an interest rate is not.
Car crashes and hockey fights — how safety mandates can make life more dangerous
January 16, 2017 | Post
Suppose you want to reduce deaths in automobile accidents. Should you make cars safer? Seems like a no-brainer, right? But consider: suppose instead of an airbag in your steering column, we put a six-inch dagger.
What standard should we use to judge school choice?
January 14, 2017 | Post
“Perhaps the voucher movement ought to be called the ‘Make schools accountable to parents’ movement.” – Arnold Kling
Why schools should be businesses (sort of)
January 10, 2017 | Post
Why is a model of education that is also profitable seen as such a bad thing?
Why we should celebrate capitalism and consumerism, at Christmas and all year
December 22, 2016 | Post
Last Christmas, Pope Francis criticized holiday consumerism, saying that ours is “a society often intoxicated by consumerism … wealth and extravagance.”
To understand why this sort of critique is mistaken, and why consumerism and capitalism deserve our love at Christmastime and throughout the year, we need to go back to basics.
The case of post-Soviet Georgia shows us that economic freedom and human dignity are inseparable
December 21, 2016 | Post
I was still a Soviet citizen when I first read some of the international documents on human, economic, and political rights.
Bureaucracy buries the human spirit with paperwork
December 18, 2016 | Post
The following words represent the generally acknowledged mindset of a bureaucrat: “Rules are rules, fella. I don’t make ‘em. I just enforce ‘em.”
An economic analysis of protectionism clearly shows that Trump’s tariffs would make us poorer, not greater
December 17, 2016 | Post
Trump’s base will be hurt the most by his wealth-destroying and punitive trade policy.