Adam Smith in China

James Dorn is a China specialist at the Cato Institute and professor of economics at Towson University in Maryland. A shorter version of this article first appeared in the Times of India, January 24, 2007. China’s transition from plan to market since 1978 has not only increased prosperity but also has led to a new [...]

The Misplaced Acceptance of Political Leaders

Richard Ebeling is the president of FEE. This is an election year, and as in all past election years we are inundated with promises and proposals from candidates, each hoping to attract our votes. For the most part what they are promising is “leadership.” They tell us all the things they will do for us [...]

Book Reviews – June 2006

The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly — reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling

The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein — reviewed by Gary M. Galles

Water for Sale: How Business and the Market Can Resolve the Worlds Water Crisis by Fredrik Segerfeldt — reviewed by George C. Leef

Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity by James Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee — reviewed by Tom Lehman

The Economic Policy of Machiavelli’s Prince

Niccol Machiavelli, statesman and writer of
Renaissance Florence, got what countless
writers have sought and only a few have
achieved: his name became immortal. It is known not so
much as a proper noun but as an adjective, and that
adjective is not one in which he could take great pride.

From Pennsylvania to Verdun: Friedrich List and the Origins of World War I

World War I, or the “Great War” (as most Europeans still call it), was one of the biggest disasters in human history. It not only killed and maimed millions, the cream of a generation, it also destroyed the liberal, cosmopolitan system that had been created in the nineteenth century. It was, moreover, the direct cause [...]

What’s Wrong with How We Teach Economics

Brandon Crocker is a real estate executive in San Diego. The decline in the core curricula of universities and the growing “cultural illiteracy” of high school and college graduates have been lamented in many books and articles. As universities have redesigned their curricula to fit the demands of political correctness and the particular interests of [...]

Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment

There is a burgeoning movement afoot to redefine Adam Smith as a “liberal” of the contemporary, progressive sort, rather than as the icon of classical liberalism he is standardly taken to be. It has never been a secret that Smith was no anarchist, nor even, probably, a “minarchist.” He argued that the government should undertake [...]

Free-Market Miracle: From Sri Lanka to Wal-Mart

Ralph Hood is a writer in Huntsville, Alabama. Having spent much of my adulthood in the aviation industry, I belong to the Greater Northern Alabama Lying Pilots’ Coffee Drinking and Tale Telling Society. We meet erratically and unreliably, solely for our own entertainment. One member, Don Langford, flies freight all over the world in huge [...]