All Posts Tagged With: "division of labor"
A Return to Gold?
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society. . . .The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the [...]
30Nov2011 | and John L. Chapman | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Family Stone: Cavemen, Trade, and Comparative Advantage
Imagine a Stone Age family: Papa Stone, Mama Stone, and their two little pebbles. Suppose that, as befits pre-women’s-lib Neanderthals, Papa Stone is initially more competent at every prehistoric survival skill: hunting, fishing, nut-and-berry gathering, firebuilding, tool-making. Despite his superior talents, it does not make sense for other family members to sit around waiting for him to [...]
30Nov2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 1 comment | ContinuedLudwig von Mises: Economist, Philosopher, Prophet
Editor’s Note: September 29 is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian economist, defender of classical liberalism, and adviser to FEE. Below is a selection of Mises’s writings published in The Freeman over the years. The Market It is customary to speak metaphorically of the automatic and anonymous forces [...]
24Aug2011 | Ludwig von Mises | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Importance of Subjectivism in Economics
After many years, Frédéric Bastiat remains a hero to libertarians. No mystery there. He made the case for freedom and punctured the arguments for state socialism with clarity and imagination. He spoke to lay readers with great effect. Bastiat loved the market economy, and badly wanted it to blossom in full—in France and everywhere else. [...]
23Mar2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedNature Itches
If you want to live closer to nature, be prepared to die closer to nature.
22Mar2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Most Elusive Proposition
Most explanations of the division of labor are actually explanations of increased productivity due to specialization. The most common example is Adam Smith’s pin factory in The Wealth of Nations, where each worker becomes better at his job because that’s all he has to concentrate on. But the increase in wealth from the division of [...]
22Oct2010 | Manuel F. Ayau | 1 comment | ContinuedHow Shall We Live?
What is civilization and how is it to be achieved? How can we live together in peace and social harmony? What is wealth and how do we acquire it? Why are so many people poor and why do they remain poor? Finally, are there objective standards of behavior that must be respected if societies are [...]
24Mar2010 | and Paul A. Cleveland | 1 comment | ContinuedHuman Action as a Work of Art
What can one say briefly about Human Action? When it was being written and people would ask what it was to be about, the answer given among Mises’s students was: Everything. Indeed. From the setting forth of praxeology as the a priori science of human action, to the description of the market’s operation, to the [...]
19Aug2009 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedVermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
Timothy Brook has written a fascinating work on the pivotal seventeenth century, one that defies neat categorization. It isn’t a history per se, although it is about a crucial period of history. It isn’t really about economics, but it conveys a considerable amount of economic understanding. Nor is it a work on philosophy, even though [...]
11Jun2009 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued“I, Pencil” Revisited
Leonard Read’s classic essay, “I, Pencil,” is justly celebrated as the best short introduction to the division of labor and undesigned order ever written. But it holds another, largely overlooked lesson as well: “I, Pencil” is an excellent primer in the Austrian approach to capital theory. Read’s pencil describes its family tree, beginning with the [...]
24Apr2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity
The primary characters in The Price of Everything are Ruth Lieber, an economics professor and provost at Stanford University, and Ramon Fernandez, a Cuban immigrant tennis prodigy studying there. Ramon is saturated with hostility toward the market process, while Ruth has a strong appreciation of markets and liberty. Their conversations—serves and volleys of economic ideas—form [...]
2Apr2009 | E. Frank Stephenson | 0 comments | ContinuedGlobalization: Extending the Market and Human Well-Being
Much of the prosperity of today’s world arises from the division of labor. Globalization, by extending the market’s scope to the entire world, enables the division of labor to become as developed as the current world population allows. However, to be truly in the interests of consumers and a boon to economic prosperity, globalization needs to occur spontaneously through the workings of the unhampered free market. Government attempts to meddle with this process—even with the sincere intent to facilitate or accelerate it—will only undermine its efficacy at benefiting us all.
1Apr2009 | Gennady Stolyarov II | 2 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – March 2008
- Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
by Bryan Caplan Reviewed by Dwight Lee - The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World
1Mar2008 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued
Imports, Exports, and Nonsense
The Commerce Department (whose idea was that?) said recently that 2006 was another record year for the U.S. “trade deficit.” The value of imports beat the value of exports by $764 billion. That makes five record years in a row. China’s trade surplus with us hit $233 billion. Ordinarily, I would ignore this nonstory because, [...]
1Jun2007 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedAid, Trade, and Institutional Quality in Africa
Joshua Hall is pursuing his Ph.D. in economics at West Virginia University. Matthew Hisrich is a senior policy fellow with the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy in Kansas. Screenwriter Richard Curtis received a great deal of attention for his 2005 movie The Girl in the Café. The film was the big-screen component of the [...]
1Jan2007 | and Joshua C. Hall | 0 comments | ContinuedMost Important
The most important people are the farmers, so it is said, for they feed the nation. Laborers, however, are just about as important because they do the real work. On the other hand, were it not for the doctors and for medical science, our life expectancy would be shorter, with less opportunity to enjoy all [...]
1Aug2006 | Victor Jacobson | 1 comment | ContinuedLudwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part II
Mises’s defense of classical liberalism against the various forms of collectivism was not limited “merely” to the economic benefits of private property.
1Jun2006 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued-
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