All Posts Tagged With: "division of labor"
The Day the Glue Came Undone
Scenes of the devastation and suffering inflicted by Hurricane Katrina will long remain in our memories. Equally horrifying were the pictures of New Orleans residentsand policemen helping themselves to goods from stores.
1Jan2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Economic Fantasy of “Star Trek”
Gardner Goldsmith (ELGGRANDE@msn.com) is an independent journalist and screenwriter in New Hampshire. A friend of mine is an award-winning science-fiction novelist. When we first met, I happened to mention to him that I was working on a science-fantasy novel, just as he was. He bristled. “I write science-fiction, not fantasy,” he said. “Those two genres [...]
1Dec2004 | P. Gardner Goldsmith | 22 comments | ContinuedEconomics in One Lesson: An Appreciation
“The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” So writes Henry Hazlitt in chapter one of his classic, Economics in One Lesson. I [...]
1Nov2004 | David R. Henderson | 0 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 [...]
1Oct2004 | Manuel F. Ayau | 2 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – September 2004
The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life by Paul Seabright Princeton University Press • 2004 • 304 pages • $29.95 Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling One of the most profound insights of economics is that the activities of billions of people can be coordinated without central direction and without most of these [...]
1Sep2004 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedAustrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom
The revival of the modern Austrian school of economics may be said to have begun 30 years ago, during the week of June 15–22, 1974, when the Institute for Humane Studies sponsored a conference on Austrian economics for about 40 participants in the small town of South Royalton, Vermont. In 1974 the Austrian school had [...]
1Jun2004 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedFree Markets, the Rule of Law, and Classical Liberalism
The history of liberty and prosperity is inseparable from the practice of free enterprise and respect for the rule of law. Both are products of the spirit of classical liberalism. But a correct understanding of free enterprise, the rule of law, and liberalism (rightly understood) is greatly lacking in the world today. Historically, liberalism is [...]
1May2004 | Richard M. Ebeling | 1 comment | ContinuedFree Trade: Key to Peace and Prosperity
Contributing editor William Peterson (whpeterson@ aol.com) is an adjunct scholar with the Heritage Foundation. At a time of international tension and a so-so economy, we are fortunate that the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has issued its essay (online or in hard copy) “The Fruits of Free Trade.” It comes from the Dallas Fed’s 2002 [...]
1Jan2004 | William H. Peterson | 1 comment | ContinuedThe State Is the Source of Rights?
In 1776 a reliable indicator of an American’s opinion of the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence was his attitude toward the 1649 execution of England’s King Charles I. Liberals, who shared Jefferson’s principles, believed Charles to have been a tyrant and hence most deserving of losing his head. Conservatives, resisting the call to [...]
1Dec2003 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Fallacies of Distributism
Thomas Woods holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and is assistant professor of history at Suffolk Community College (SUNY) in Brentwood, New York. In certain disaffected pockets of the political left and right, more and more voices can be heard on behalf of an economic and social system known as distributism. According to [...]
1Nov2003 | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | 3 comments | ContinuedBorn Capitalist: Free Markets and Hominid Evolution
Robert Wright (alexanderhamilton@comcast.net) is author of Wealth of Nations Rediscovered (Cambridge) and Hamilton Unbound (Greenwood), coauthor of Mutually Beneficial (NYU Press, 2003), and co-editor of History of Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance in Historical Perspective (both Pickering and Chatto, 2003). The generic term for bipedal apes, including Homo sapiens or modern humans, is hominid. Since [...]
1Jun2003 | Robert E. Wright | 3 comments | ContinuedEnlightened Altruism
Libertarians are awfully irritating. They keep talking about “enlightened self-interest,” which is, both literally and figuratively, a self-centered phrase. Why don’t they talk about “enlightened altruism,” that is, doing the most good for the most people? After all, there’s a lot of need in the world. People need food, clothing, shelter, medicine-all the necessities of [...]
1Apr2003 | Richard W. Fulmer | 3 comments | ContinuedCapitalism and the Weak
One allegation about capitalism is that it enables the strong to crush the weak. Some critics contend it models the ruthlessness of biological Darwinism’s extermination of the weak through natural selection. In the Marxist view the entire proletarian class is enchained by the power of capitalists and must seize for itself the ownership of the [...]
1May2002 | Daniel Hager | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Virtues of Sweatshops
Stefan Spath was formerly executive director of FEE. An acquaintance said to me the other day how appalling it is to see so many Americans revel in the gifts received during the holidays. “We should be ashamed of ourselves,” he lamented. “Most of this stuff was manufactured in sweatshops.” Such a misinformed notion shouldn’t go [...]
1Mar2002 | Stefan Spath | 2 comments | ContinuedAnti-Trade: A Vortex of Absurdity
Barry Loberfeld is a freelance writer. Among the more intriguing examples of junk e-mail to come in over the electronic transom of late was this parable for our times: Joe Smith started the day early, having set his alarm clock (MADE IN ARGENTINA) for 6 a.m. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he [...]
1Jan2002 | Barry Loberfeld | 0 comments | ContinuedA Race to the Bottom
Barry Loberfeld is a freelance writer. In a letter dated December 2000 and addressed, “Dear Friend of US/LEAP,” Stephen Coats, executive director of the U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project, spoke of various purported “victories and losses in the struggle for worker justice in the global economy.” Among the “losses” was what he called the [...]
1Jul2001 | Barry Loberfeld | 0 comments | ContinuedDivide and Conquer
If I had to pick my favorite sentence in all of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action (a daunting task in a 900-page book), it would be this one: “The fact that my fellow man wants shoes as I do does not make it harder for me to get shoes, but easier” (p. 673 of the [...]
1Dec2000 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued-
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