All Posts Tagged With: "consumer choice"
Dim Bulbs
“Hell, there are no rules here—we’re trying to accomplish something.” —Thomas A. Edison Edison’s words may have been true in the 1800s. Today, however, we have plenty of rules, thanks to the U.S. Congress. Some are so bizarre that you have to question the judgment of those who come up with them. One rule in [...]
10Jun2009 | Michael Heberling | 30 comments | ContinuedThe Big We Really Need to Beware
Wayne Dunn (WayDunn@aol.com) is a freelance writer living in Tennessee. It’s funny how an innocent little word like “big” can be used to help conjure up images of corruption. Just think of what’s usually meant by “big oil,” “big drug companies,” and “big corporations.” But are big businesses inherently bad, as some would like us [...]
1Jul2004 | Wayne Dunn | 0 comments | ContinuedChoice Is Bad for Us?
One of the often-unperceived consequences of an expanding welfare state is the gradual atrophy of independent judgment. Judgment is a skill, and, like other skills, it must be exercised to be vigorous and dependable. The fewer opportunities people have to exercise their judgment and the more that others make decisions for them, the weaker this [...]
1Jun2004 | James R. Otteson | 0 comments | ContinuedWashington’s Centrally Planned Heating and Cooling
While the Clinton administration had eight years to “save the environment,” it waited until the final days to push through a flurry of questionable environmental regulations. Among these was the regulation that would require increasing the efficiency of central air conditioners and heat pumps by 30 percent. In the arcane language of the energy business, [...]
1Jul2003 | Michael Heberling | Comments Off | ContinuedHenry Ford, Upton Sinclair, and Limits on Consumer Choice
Richard Coffman and Ashley Lyman are associate professors of economics at the University of Idaho. Early in the twentieth century two prominent Americans, one a capitalist, the other a socialist, enunciated surprisingly similar views on the relationship between product differentiation and consumer welfare. The capitalist, Henry Ford, had revolutionized the young automobile industry, using mass-production [...]
1Feb2003 | and Richard B. Coffman | 1 comment | ContinuedCapitalism and Coercion
A century and more ago, when Marxism was in its ascendancy as a theory, its followers (as well as many others) naturally believed its dogma about workers being the helpless pawns of capitalists–forced to sell their labor at less than its true worth, with no real alternative. But now, despite Marxism’s collapse as both a [...]
1Feb2002 | Allan Levite | 1 comment | ContinuedWashing Your Clothes Washington’s Way
Our home is becoming less and less our castle as the government moves in . . . one room at a time. First there was the bathroom. Working toilets were outlawed in 1992 in favor of the environmentally friendly government toilets. (See my “The Federally Mandated Toilet Still Doesn’t Work,” November 2001.) On January 1, [...]
1Jan2002 | Michael Heberling | 3 comments | ContinuedCompensate Workers Harmed by Trade?
Should government financially assist workers harmed by free trade? Many people answer yes. Such adjustment assistance sounds reasonable. But a deeper investigation of the issue counsels against it. Losing a job indeed is harmful, both financially and emotionally. Free trade with foreigners, however, does not uniquely cause job losses. To focus on free trade’s role [...]
1Nov2001 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedReal Federalism: Why It Matters, How It Could Happen
“Federalism’s history has been the history of its demise.” So writes Michael S. Greve in a book designed nevertheless to prove that, like Mark Twain’s demise, the death of federalism has been greatly exaggerated. Federalism has been down for decades, floored by the pro-New Deal shift of the Supreme Court in 1937 and kicked repeatedly [...]
1Jul2000 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued-
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