All Posts Tagged With: "corporations"

Rizzo on the Supreme Court Ruling

I highly recommend this post by Mario Rizzo on the Supreme Court free-speech decision. Nobody has put it better. A tidbit: The terrible truth of the matter is that a large complex government is incompatible with political and personal freedom. It is not just the economic freedom in various sectors that is threatened by a [...]

24Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

The Political Economy of John Taylor of Caroline

As noted in the May Freeman, American revolutionaries mixed classical-republican and liberal political languages somewhat indiscriminately. Republicanism posited a relation between power and property in which independent proprietors were the bulwark of liberty. English critics of post-1688 Whig mercantilism deployed republican ideas, leading many historians to paint them as “agrarians” resisting capitalism, modernization, and social [...]

1Jun2008 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | Continued

"Corporate" Power Alone Is the Problem?

One of the tried and true formulas for giving a speech is the “loss of the golden days” approach. The speaker contrasts an imagined time in the past when things were good with present conditions. The present, of course, is bad and rapidly getting worse. Some evil force that the listeners are bound to dislike [...]

1Apr2005 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

The Business Revolution of the Nineteenth Century

The business corporation is one of the most maligned and disliked institutions of our time. The criticism comes from many parts of the political spectrum, and its substance has become a common-sense assumption for many. As ever, much of this criticism lacks historical perspective, despite the inclusion of historical accounts of the growth of large [...]

1Apr2005 | Stephen Davies | 0 comments | Continued

The Theory of the Corporation

Ever a topic of dispute for observers of capitalism, the corporation has been undergoing increased scrutiny in the light of current business scandals. While other forms of capitalist enterprise, such as partnerships and single proprietorships, have avoided some of the wrath of socialist agitators, the limited-liability corporation, public or private, has had to endure the [...]

1Mar2003 | Norman Barry | 1 comment | Continued

Is the Corporation a Free-Market Institution?

Is the modern large publicly traded business corporation compatible with a truly free market? The question itself may seem strange, even silly. Corporations are primary actors in what the media refer to as “the market economy.” Also, when the media refer to “the market,” they as often as not mean the stock exchange, which is [...]

1Mar2003 | Frank van Dun | 1 comment | Continued

The Tax Code: Now That’s Outrageous!

If you’ve ever had the sinking suspicion that many in the mainstream media just don’t get it, then the September 2002 issue of Reader’s Digest was just for you. In its pages, conservative columnist Tucker Carlson penned his mighty attack on American business under the title “Artful Dodgers,” in the “That’s Outrageous!” department of the [...]

1Dec2002 | Scott McPherson | 0 comments | Continued

A Tale of Two Brain Trusts

“A political war,” said Raymond Moley, “is one in which everyone shoots from the lip.”1 He knew what he was talking about. Moley was the organizer and unofficial leader of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust,” the coterie of close advisers and speechwriters who helped FDR win the election of 1932 and assisted in formulating many [...]

1Oct2002 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | Continued

Government and Business Are the Same?

“Let us now praise slothful, inefficient, bloated government,” reads the opening of an April 30 Washington Post essay, “When the Blue Chips Are Down, in Gov We Trust.” “Let us now rejoice in the glory of your trillions of tax dollars at work.” Why are we rejoicing? Because staff writer Paul Farhi intends to show [...]

1Sep2002 | Scott McPherson | 0 comments | Continued

Colossus: How the Corporation Changed America

The American boy of 1854,” Henry Adams observed, “stood nearer to the year 1 than the year 1900.” A major reason was the development of the corporation and the rise of the United States to a world power during the late 1800s. In Colossus, editor Jack Beatty, as his book’s subtitle suggests, looks at “how [...]

1Sep2002 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

Who Should Vote?

Status as an adult citizen in a political jurisdiction is seen as a sufficient condition to entitle one to vote for a representative or participate in collective decision-making. Why not apply that same criterion and entitle adult citizens to voting rights to decide the composition of corporate boards of directors and other corporate matters? If [...]

1Jan2002 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

No Yahoo! for New Shareholder Plan

Gary Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. Last March Yahoo! announced that its board of directors had adopted a shareholder-rights plan, which it described as “designed to deter coercive takeover tactics, including the accumulation of shares in the open market or through private transactions, and to prevent an acquirer from gaining control [...]

1Dec2001 | Gary M. Galles | 0 comments | Continued

One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank

Doubleday · 2000 · 414 pages · $26.00 Reviewed by Brian Doherty Thomas Frank is the hippest leftist theorist around. He publishes The Baffler, a journal of cultural criticism mostly aimed at the evils of corporations. Frank is a hero at Harper’s and gets his books—essay collections of social criticism, not generally considered hot properties—published [...]

1Dec2001 | Brian Doherty | 1 comment | Continued

How the Computer Emancipated the American Corporation

Larry Schweikart teaches history at the University of Dayton. It’s pretty common knowledge that we have entered the “information age” and that information technologies have dramatically changed business in America and in the rest of the world. Currently, there is a heated debate raging about the standard of living in the United States—particularly in the [...]

1Mar2001 | Larry Schweikart | 0 comments | Continued

Sacrificing Lives for Profits

I pointed out in my last column that despite what people commonly say about how human life is priceless, they put a price on their lives every day with their actions. People take chances that shorten their life expectancies to do things that are fun, and for the convenience and savings of not taking every precaution possible.

1Nov2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | Continued

Is There an Anglo-American Economic Model?

Those who wish to avoid the painful changes wrought by increasingly competitive and open global markets speak derisively of an Anglo-American economic model. Allusions to a cabal of white men in dark suits involve a racial epithet that is distasteful. It is also ill-informed in that it belittles the enormous contribution made by women, Asiatic [...]

1Oct2000 | Christopher Lingle | 1 comment | Continued

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace

Lawrence Lessig has written an important but deeply flawed book on the future of the Internet. The book is important because of who Lessig is (Harvard law professor, celebrated member of the “digiterati,” and adviser to U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson) and because of the insights into the Internet that Lessig offers. The book [...]

1Aug2000 | Andrew P. Morriss | 0 comments | Continued
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