All Posts Tagged With: "central planning"
We’re the Economy They Want to Manage
In his State of the Union speech President Obama said: Tonight, I want to . . . lay out a blueprint for an economy that’s built to last. . . . Considering that an economy (a free one, that is) is just people engaging in exchanges for mutual benefit, it defies blueprinting, which sounds ominously [...]
26Jan2012 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedPopulation Control Nonsense
According to an American Dream article, “Al Gore, Agenda 21 and Population Control,” there are too many of us and it has a negative impact on the earth. Here’s what the United Nations Population Fund said in its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009, “Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate”: [...]
30Nov2011 | Walter E. Williams | 10 comments | ContinuedWanted: A Healthy Dose of Humility
An awful lot of people in this world are really puffed up about themselves. One of the character traits I wish were much more widely practiced these days is good old-fashioned humility. T. S. Eliot said, “Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well [...]
30Nov2011 | Lawrence W. Reed | 5 comments | ContinuedEugenics: Progressivism’s Ultimate Social Engineering
According to the received account of the Progressive Era, an enlightened government swept in and regulated markets for goods, labor, and capital, thereby protecting the hapless masses from the vicissitudes of unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism. The Progressives had faith that experts would rise above self-interest and implement wise plans to create a great society. The resulting [...]
21Sep2011 | and Art Carden | 21 comments | ContinuedWalter Lippmann: The Impossibilities of Social Planning
At the beginning of the twentieth century, observed historian A. J. P. Taylor, a law-abiding Englishman’s conscious relations with the government were limited to his contacts with the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked, and if he wanted to travel abroad he could do so without [...]
21Sep2011 | Harold B. Jones Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedWhich Strategy Really Ended the Great Depression?
“World War II got us out of the Great Depression.” Many people said that during the war, and some still do today. The quality of American life, however, was precarious during the war. Food was rationed, luxuries removed, taxes high, and work dangerous. A recovery that does not make—as Robert Higgs points out in Depression, [...]
24Aug2011 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedThe Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History
In my M.B.A. economics class I emphasize the Austrian view of entrepreneurship, noting that successful entrepreneurs are rewarded for moving resources from lower-valued to higher-valued uses in a free market. Alas I also spend time explaining “political entrepreneurship”: exploiting connections with “the right people” to profit by moving resources from uses consumers would value highly [...]
22Jun2011 | William L. Anderson | 5 comments | ContinuedIs a Nation Something That Can Be Built?
In the wake of both the collapse of the Soviet empire and the more recent U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have seen a lively debate on nation-building. Many people who are ordinarily skeptical about the power of the U.S. government as a force for good, either at home or around the world, have [...]
25May2011 | Steven Horwitz | 10 comments | ContinuedWolf Heads and Carbon Credits
Something tells me, deep inside, that managed overreaction to carbon emissions will lead just as surely to the kind of devastating policies that gave us wolves-as-an-endangered-species.
9May2011 | Paul Schwennesen | 14 comments | ContinuedSpontaneous Order
You are our Ruler. An entrepreneur tells you he wants to create something he calls a “skating rink.” Young and old will strap blades to their feet and speed through an oval arena, weaving patterns as moods strike them. You’d probably say, “We need regulation—skating stoplights, speed limits, turn signals—and a rink director to police [...]
21Apr2011 | John Stossel | 4 comments | ContinuedAddressing Local Knowledge
Friedrich Hayek argued that “local knowledge” or “particular knowledge of time and place,” such as rules of thumb or skills learned by doing, is more important than the kind of knowledge that can be written down and objectively conveyed.
3Aug2010 | Sandy Ikeda | 4 comments | ContinuedFree Markets Blossom in Vietnam
Americans think of the Vietnam War as the first armed conflict in our history that we lost. Tanks and troops from the communist North captured the South’s capital of Saigon on April 30, 1975, renamed it Ho Chi Minh City, and ended decades of war. Who can forget the scenes of the last frenzied evacuation [...]
7Jul2010 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedStimulate the Catallaxy?
Last fall and winter’s brouhaha over the so-called economic stimulus package got me thinking about how far off target most people are when they talk about “the economy.” To hear the politicians and commentators tell it, the economy is a big machine located somewhere in Washington, D.C. That machine requires a skilled operator, and elections [...]
1Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedAn Economist Reflects on Law
I graduated from law school ten years ago. During that decade I’ve often reflected on the differences between my experiences in law school and those as an economics graduate student. The most obvious difference is that earning my Ph.D. was vastly more interesting and fun than earning my J.D. I am not criticizing my law [...]
30Jun2010 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | ContinuedOrient Express to Hell
In 1986 and 1987 I slipped behind the Iron Curtain a few times to study economic perversity and political slavery. In November 1987 I flew into Hungary before heading on to the most repressive regime in Europe. The train from Budapest to Bucharest, Romania, was called the Orient Express. The original Orient Express began in [...]
20May2010 | James Bovard | 4 comments | ContinuedDo We Really Want a Right to Health Care?
Do you have a right to health care? People want a right to health care because they think it will guarantee them the services they need. But might obtaining health care as a political right rather than a market commodity have a downside? The government cannot produce or purchase an infinite amount of health care. [...]
20Apr2010 | Theodore Levy | 4 comments | ContinuedWhere There’s a Will There’s a Way?
Many aphorisms and common expressions take on a different meaning when seen through the lens of economics.
18Mar2010 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | Continued-
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