All Posts Tagged With: "capitalism"

How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present

Professor Thomas DiLorenzo of Loyola College, Maryland, has managed to pack two books into the volume titled How Capitalism Saved America. The first is the work promised in the title, the inspiring story about the creative power of that nexus of voluntary exchanges known as capitalism. The second, more sobering, book inhabiting these same pages [...]

13Jul2010 | | 24 comments | Continued

Why Globalization Works

Look at the foes of economic globalization and you’ll find a curious coalition. Some are left-wingers who oppose globalization because they oppose capitalism. But others are right-wing protectionists who don’t like foreign competition. The strength of the anti-globalist coalition has waxed and waned over time, but there is still a large number of people who [...]

13Jul2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

Capital Letters

Was There Money in the Original “Star Trek”? To the Editor: In the December 2004 issue of The Freeman, P. Gardner Goldsmith criticizes “Star Trek” for foolishly postulating that we could do without money. He presents us with an argument of the following structure: X is stupid; someone told him that “Star Trek” creator Gene [...]

8Jul2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

The list of complaints against laissez-faire capitalism is long, including such contradictory notions as its guilt in impoverishing the masses and its role in enabling the poor to escape their “proper” station in life. In World on Fire, Amy Chua adds to the list, arguing that capitalism, when combined with democratization in economically developing nations, [...]

2Jul2010 | | 2 comments | Continued

The Forgotten Robber Barons

Conventional wisdom, which often is mostly convention and very little wisdom, confidently instructs us that rapacious capitalists dominated and victimized American society in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The white knight of government then rode to the rescue of hapless workers and consumers. The message: business bad, government good. Honest, objective historians of [...]

19Apr2010 | | 2 comments | Continued

Let’s Take the “Crony” Out of “Crony Capitalism”

When Judge Richard Posner, the prolific conservative intellectual, released his book A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent Into Depression last year, you might have thought the final verdict was in: Capitalism caused the economic downturn and high unemployment. That this verdict was pronounced by someone like Posner, who is associated [...]

24Mar2010 | | 5 comments | Continued

The Wisdom of Nien Cheng

Nien Cheng, author of Life and Death in Shanghai (1986), died in Washington last November at the age of 94. She was an incredibly courageous woman and the embodiment of grace and wisdom. She loved traditional Chinese culture, but her world was shattered on August 30, 1966, when the Red Guards ransacked her home and, [...]

24Mar2010 | | 4 comments | Continued

Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy

Capitalism at Work by Robert L. Bradley, Jr., looks at the destructive force of cronyism (or what Bradley calls “political capitalism”) in America. Though people keep saying—especially in the wake of the bursting housing bubble and subsequent financial meltdown—that “capitalism failed,” the book makes the exceedingly important point that what prevails in the United States [...]

24Mar2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

Capitalism versus the Free Market

My lecture “Capitalism versus the Free Market,” sponsored by the Future of Freedom Foundation and held at George Mason University Monday night, can be viewed here. Economic Liberty Lecture Series: Sheldon Richman from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.

2Mar2010 | | 1 comment | Continued

Is the Name “Capitalism” Worth Keeping? Part 2

The deeper problem with the terms “capitalism” and “socialism” is that they don’t indicate the institutional arrangements under the systems would operate

7Jan2010 | | 21 comments | Continued

A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression

Richard Posner’s latest book belongs to the fast-expanding cottage industry of financial crisis books. A federal judge with a grounding in economics, Posner would seem to be an ideal person to tackle this complicated subject. Alas, he provides neither fresh material nor an interesting perspective. Posner describes well-known events—the failure of investment banks Bear Stearns [...]

5Jan2010 | | 1 comment | Continued

TGIF: Workers of the World Unite for a Free Market

People typically become libertarians because they favor individualism and abhor seeing themselves and others abused. Unfortunately, nonlibertarians don’t know this. They think libertarians are simply pro-business (and anti-labor). We can set the record straight by acknowledging that government-business collusion hurts working people. The rest of TGIF is here.

18Dec2009 | | 0 comments | Continued

Science Fiction and Economic Fiction

Thomas Macaulay Boudreaux, age 12 and my only child, is a huge fan of Star Trek. Actually, even an italicized “huge” doesn’t quite capture the extent of Thomas’s fascination with, and knowledge of, the franchise. From Captain Pike through Mr. Spock to Ensign Sato, Thomas knows and loves anything and everything Star Trek. So in [...]

23Oct2009 | | 5 comments | Continued

Frustrating Michael Moore

Whether he realizes it or not, Michael Moore favors a system in which an elite necessarily would make critical decisions for the rest of us. He’d be incredulous to hear that, but if he ever comes to understand it, libertarians might end up with an unlikely ally.

16Oct2009 | | 3 comments | Continued

Close Encounters: NY Fed & Wall Street

Last’s week’s TGIF discussed the intimate relationship between the Federal Reserve–specifically, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York–and the Wall Street establishment it regulates. Using a recent New York Times article, TGIF  focused on former New York Fed president and current Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, whose mentor is former Goldman Sachs executive, former Treasury secretary, [...]

4May2009 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Freeman, May 2009

24Apr2009 | | 0 comments | Continued

Gates on Market Superiority

Matthew Bishop interviewed Bill Gates the other day for The Economist about Gates’ letter that he wrote to citizens.  It’s worth watching for a number of reasons.  First, because of what Mr. Gates has to say about the role of private enterprise in social aid (approximately 2:19 into the interview), and second, because of his [...]

28Jan2009 | | 0 comments | Continued
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