All Posts Tagged With: "entrepreneurship"
Cavemen and Middlemen
Middlemen helped bring mankind out of caves and into prosperity; in return they have been reviled, persecuted, and killed.
9Jan2012 | Richard W. Fulmer | 13 comments | ContinuedNew Threats to Freedom: From Banning Ice Cream Trucks in Brooklyn to Abandoning Democracy Around the World
New Threats to Freedom, edited and introduced by HarperCollins’s executive editor Adam Bellow, is an ambitious anthology. Its premise: The twentieth century faced unique threats to freedom, such as communism and fascism, and the 21st century equally confronts unique challenges to the preservation of freedom. Thirty renowned authors examine 30 of those “threats,” which include [...]
4Jan2012 | Wendy McElroy | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Failure of Market Failure
Which process has better built-in mechanisms to provide the knowledge and incentives necessary to notice imperfections and improve on them?
8Dec2011 | Steven Horwitz | 41 comments | ContinuedThe Importance of Failure
In today’s society failure has become something to fear, avoid, and therefore prevent at all costs. Whether it is unemployment compensation, farm subsidies, or bailouts for failing companies, the world seems to view failure as having no redeeming social value. If success is all good and failure is all bad, then it seems as though [...]
26Oct2011 | and Steven Horwitz | 11 comments | Continued“Find Out What the People Want”: The Russell Conwell Story
“There is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings. . . .” Those words come, interestingly enough, from what is almost certainly the most successful charitable fundraising speech ever delivered. It was given over 6,000 times, provided almost 1,700 young people with the opportunity to [...]
26Oct2011 | Harold B. Jones Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Battle to Save American Street Vending
Larry Miller and Stanley Hambrick are classic American entrepreneurs. Both men started their businesses from scratch, and for more than 20 years they’ve been living their American Dreams. They each own and operate popular vending stands outside Turner Field in Atlanta, serving baseball fans with tasty snacks, fully licensed Braves merchandise, parody shirts, and other [...]
26Oct2011 | Bob Ewing | 11 comments | ContinuedSteve Jobs, Entrepreneur
We can see in Steve Jobs the Misesian entrepreneur. In a variety of ways he blazed trails and brought forth products that make our lives more pleasant, more productive — more fun.
7Oct2011 | Sheldon Richman | 10 comments | ContinuedA Tale of Two Situations
Once upon a time selling a chicken was fraught with few if any legal implications. Remodeling a shed was equally simple from a regulatory standpoint. Today, however, we live in more enlightened times. Protected from our wayward desires by an empowered bureaucracy, we can rest easier knowing that decisions like what we eat and where [...]
24Aug2011 | Paul Schwennesen | 4 comments | 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 Breezes of Creative Destruction
As dramatic as the news of Borders’s closing has been, in the larger scheme of things economic change happens fairly slowly, at least compared to changes caused by governments.
26Jul2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 7 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 | ContinuedBut There ARE Free Lunches!
Creative discovery, what Israel Kirzner calls “entrepreneurship,” creates value where none existed before.
31May2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Kid and the Benevolent Bully
The kid had eighteen cents. The benevolent bully had a buck-forty-nine. The kid went to the corner candy store and bought a licorice pipe and a jawbreaker for two cents. He was giving serious consideration to the chewable wax lips when he overheard a big kid at the fountain ordering a large lemonade for a [...]
21Apr2011 | Roger Koopman | 8 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 | ContinuedFree the Children, Cut the Budget
Education is important – far too important to leave to politicians and bureaucrats.
4Mar2011 | Sheldon Richman | 29 comments | ContinuedEntrepreneurs Under Attack
Every day, federal, state, and local governments stifle small businesses to privilege well-connected incumbent companies. It’s a system of protectionism for influential insiders who don’t want competition. Every locality has its share of business moguls who are cozy with politicians. Together, they use the power of government to keep competition down and prices high. The [...]
24Nov2010 | John Stossel | 10 comments | ContinuedThe Decline in Economic Freedom
In the early 1980s both the United States and the United Kingdom reduced marginal tax rates, brought inflation under control, and relaxed both regulations and trade barriers. Many other countries soon followed, and the result was a quarter-century of expansion in both economic freedom and the growth of income. These movements can be observed in [...]
24Nov2010 | , , and James D. Gwartney | 4 comments | Continued-
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