All Posts Tagged With: "barriers to entry"
The Many Monopolies
We libertarians defend economic freedom, not big business. We advocate free markets, not the corporate economy. And what would freed markets look like? Nothing like the controlled markets we have today. But how often do we hear mass unemployment, financial crisis, ecological catastrophe, and the economic status quo attributed to the voraciousness of “unfettered free [...]
24Aug2011 | Charles Johnson | 19 comments | ContinuedWhat Economic Freedom Indexes Leave Out
In a syndicated column last October, television journalist John Stossel lamented the downgrading from sixth to eighth place—“behind Canada!”—of the United States on the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. The Index is based on several metrics, including freedom of movement of capital, the degree of business regulation, and levels of taxes and [...]
24Feb2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 6 comments | ContinuedSeasteading: Striking at the Root of Bad Government
Libertarians have done a wonderful job of pointing out the inefficiency and cruelty of government and identifying some of the causes. We know that current policies are bad; we know that such policies are the inevitable outcome of unrestrained democracy; and we even have some ideas about what would work better. The most fundamental problem [...]
24Feb2011 | and Patri Friedman | 11 comments | ContinuedThe Right to Work
The people of Louisiana must sleep soundly knowing that their state protects them from . . . unlicensed florists. That’s right. In Louisiana, you can’t sell flower arrangements unless you have permission from the government. How do you get permission? You must pass a test graded by a board of florists who already have licenses. [...]
20May2010 | John Stossel | 16 comments | ContinuedMedical Markets Can’t Work?
Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, an academic pediatric cardiologist who (like all physicians) financially benefits from the cartelization of medicine, explains in Slate, the online magazine, that health care markets can’t work because of the information asymmetry between physician and patient (“Talk to the Invisible Hand”). So we need the cartel. This is not particularly surprising; most [...]
5Jan2010 | Theodore Levy | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Right to Earn a Living Under Attack
In Louisiana it is illegal to sell and arrange flowers without permission from the government. Aspiring florists must pass a subjective licensing exam that is graded by existing florists, who have a direct incentive to keep new competitors from entering the market. Thus the failure rate is higher than that of the Louisiana bar, which [...]
1Dec2008 | Bob Ewing | 6 comments | ContinuedHierarchy or the Market
In an article in last June’s Freeman, I applied some ideas from the socialist-calculation debate to the private corporation and examined the extent to which it is an island of calculational chaos in the market economy. I’d like to expand that line of analysis now and apply some common free-market insights on knowledge and incentives [...]
1Apr2008 | Kevin A. Carson | 2 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – June 2007
- Hitlers Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State
by Goetz Aly Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
- The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money
by Timothy P. Carney Reviewed by Sheldon Richman
- Income and Wealth
by Alan Reynolds Reviewed by George C. Leef
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle What We Have Learned; How to Fix It
by Henry N. Butler and Larry E. Ribstein Reviewed by Barbara Hunter
- The Joy of SOX: Why Sarbanes-Oxley and Service-Oriented Architecture May Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You
by Hugh Taylor Reviewed by Barbara Hunter
Cable-Franchise Reform: Deregulation or Just New Regulators?
Adam Summers is a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation. There is much hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing among politicians who decry businesses for maintaining monopolies that harm consumers. Yet in a free market such businesses will find any monopoly position fleeting. If they charge too much or fail to provide suitable quality in their products and [...]
1Apr2007 | Adam Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedAnother Reason for Airport Privatization
Robert Poole, Jr., is president of the Reason Foundation and a long-time transportation policy researcher. Copyright 2000 Reason Foundation. In several ways, the specter of re-regulation of the airlines raised its head in 1999. A number of bills in Congress aimed at increasing smaller airlines’ access into major hub airports like Chicago’s O’Hare by giving [...]
1Jun2000 | Robert W. Poole Jr. | 19 comments | ContinuedTransforming the Political Marketplace
What we expect from our politicians goes a long way toward determining what kind of politicians we can expect to find in office. Just as suppliers compete by trying to please their customers, politicians compete by trying to please voters. Just as the features of cars tell us something about the preferences of car buyers, [...]
1Dec1999 | Russell Roberts | 0 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
