All Posts Tagged With: "F. A. Hayek"
The Dangers of the Myth of Merit
In his various chapters and essays on the “mirage” of the concept “social justice,” F. A. Hayek makes a claim that is very often overlooked by those who support the market. He argues that markets generally do not reward “merit.” That is, the people who become wealthy in the marketplace do not do [...]
19Nov2009 | Steven Horwitz | 5 comments | ContinuedRule of Law versus Legislative Orders
Webster’s dictionary defines law as all the rules of conduct established and enforced by the authority, legislation, or custom of a given community or group. Why are there laws in the first place? The most apparent answer is, were there not a particular law, some people would not conduct themselves according to the law in [...]
23Oct2009 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | ContinuedArrogance
It’s crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It’s even crazier to do it in a few months.
Yet that is what some members of Congress presumed to do. They intended, as the New York Times put it, “to reinvent the nation’s health care system.”
Let that [...]
Human Action, 1949: A Dramatic Episode in Intellectual History
A great book, it has been remarked, is like a great castle. It can be viewed from many different angles, each offering a unique perspective. Viewing Ludwig von Mises’s monumental work from the vantage of 2009 permits one to see with great clarity one fascinating aspect of the book–the sheer drama of its emergence at [...]
19Aug2009 | Israel M. Kirzner | 3 comments | ContinuedHuman Action: The 60th Anniversary
We are celebrating the 60th anniversary of a great book, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, by a learned man and a clear thinker: the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. It presents Mises’s understanding–after long years of study and thought–of how the market economy functions. It is a major contribution to human knowledge.
Interventionist ideas dominated [...]
On the Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle, Part I
One of the most vivid memories of my undergraduate years is of sitting for hours in my carrel in the old Polk Library at Nicholls State University and reading F.A. Hayek’s Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle and his Prices and Production. These books on the economic cycles of booms and busts are among the [...]
20Jan2009 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 4 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – December 2008
Is the Welfare State Justified?
by Daniel Shapiro
Cambridge University Press • 2007 • 309 pages • $80.00 hardcover; $27.99 paperback
Reviewed by George C. Leef
Americans have lived with the welfare state for so long—more than 70 years—that for most, it is simply a fact of life. Asking whether it is justified would seem about as pointless as [...]
The Current Economic Crisis and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle
Richard Ebeling is completing his tenure as the president of FEE. This fall he will teach economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
The current financial crisis emerged out of an economic boom that began in 2003 and saw rising stock values, increasing home prices, and high levels of employment and production. The upturn followed a [...]
Are High Taxes the Basis of Freedom and Prosperity?
In the November 2006 Scientific American, Jeffrey Sachs, economic consultant to governments and the UN, argues (yet again) for higher U.S. taxes and more government officials with ever-increasing powers over their subjects. These perennial and inevitable conclusions are hung (here) on a Nordic peg.
According to Sachs, F. A. Hayek, “the Austrian-born free-market economist, . . [...]
The Pursuit of Happiness: The Intellectual Defense of Liberty
All too often defenders of free-market capitalism base their defense on the demonstration that free markets allocate resources more efficiently and hence lead to greater wealth than socialism and other forms of statism. While that is true, as Professor Milton Friedman frequently pointed out, economic efficiency and greater wealth should be seen and praised as [...]
1Oct2007 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedSocialism after Hayek
By Theodore A. Burczak Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
1Jul2007 | agardner | 0 comments | ContinuedHayek, Coase, and Buchanan on the Market Process
Donald Boudreaux is chairman of the economics department at George Mason University.
Compared to most other economists, my George Mason University colleagues and I put more emphasis on books than articles. Tyler Cowen, one of my most accomplished colleagues, often describes GMU Economics as a “book department.”
This affection for books doesn’t mean that we ignore articles. Indeed, [...]
Economic Calculation in the Corporate Commonwealth
Kevin Carson is the author of Studies in Mutualist Political Economy. He blogs at Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism. The present article comes out of his work on a forthcoming book on anarchist organization theory.
The general lines of Ludwig von Mises’s rational-calculation argument are well known. A market in factors of production is necessary for [...]
Tolls on the Road to Serfdom
D.W. MacKenzie is an assistant professor of economics and finance at SUNY Plattsburgh.
Many people think their taxes are too high and that the tax system is unfair. While those who favor individual liberty might find this encouraging, the specific reasons for discontent are not entirely positive. Many Americans think the current system is unfair because [...]
Hayek on Closed Shops and Yellow Dogs
Charles Baird is a professor of economics and the director of the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California State University at East Bay .
In my December 2006 column I discussed some of Hayek’s classical-liberal views on the rule of law and labor unions. In brief, Hayek approved of voluntary unionism based on [...]
The Great Contraction, 1929-33
The recession that began in mid-1929 need not have become a disaster. Many downturns had occurred previously in U.S. economic history, and nearly all of them had been fairly shallow and soon followed by recovery and continued growth. In the nineteenth century most people had believed that the government neither knew how nor possessed the [...]
1Apr2007 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Euro versus Currency Competition
It is now four years since the euro was introduced as a circulating currency in parts of the European Union. Both Europeans and others are becoming increasingly used to a single money in much of the continent. If the euro remains in use for another five or ten years people may well look back at [...]
1Jan2007 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued-
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Book Reviews
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The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
