All Posts Tagged With: "free-rider problem"

Growing Government Ensures “National Greatness”?

There is widespread belief among politicians, public officials, and pundits that if government doesn’t give us the seeds, nothing will grow. A friend of mine served on our city’s legislative council for eight years. During that time he often heard—in defense of tax-funded business incentives—“If we don’t do something, nothing will happen.” The same belief [...]

21Sep2011 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 6 comments | Continued

Fixing Global Warming for Fun If Not Profit

Amateur global-warming skeptics can make me uncomfortable.

4Jun2010 | Sheldon Richman | 27 comments | Continued

Miners, Vigilantes, and Cattlemen: Property Rights on the Western Frontier

As Americans moved west over the course of the nineteenth century, the property-rights institutions they brought with them from the east evolved to meet the demands of the new conditions. The western frontier experience both changed and strengthened those institutions. The story of property rights on the frontier is captured by the experiences of three [...]

1Apr2007 | Andrew P. Morriss | 5 comments | Continued

The End Run to Freedom

What does the future hold for economic life in the United States? Will we move toward greater freedom or less? What role will ideas and rhetoric play, if any, in making sure that the direction is one that lovers of freedom prefer?

1Jun2006 | Russell Roberts | 0 comments | Continued

The Government-Created Right-to-Work Issue

The principles involved in right-to-work laws are identical with those involved in [workplace antidiscrimination laws.] Both interfere with the freedom of the employment contract, in the one case by specifying that a particular color or religion cannot
be made a condition of employment; in the other that
membership in a union cannot be.

1Jan2006 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | Continued

Mitigating Disaster: Abolish FEMA and Let Gas Prices Rise

The waste, delays, and incompetence that characterize FEMA are the result of a free-rider problem inherent in all federal spending programs.

1Dec2005 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | Continued

Government-Sector Unionism

In my February column I gave two examples of the decline of unionism in the private sector and pointed out that the picture is very different in the government sector. Whereas the unions’ private-sector market share in 2001 was 9 percent, in the government sector it was 37.4 percent (down slightly from 37.5 percent in [...]

1May2002 | Charles W. Baird | 3 comments | Continued

Invisible Hand Obsolete?

Allen Murray’s Wall Street Journal article “Pushing Adam Smith Past the Millennium” (June 21, 1999) purports to discuss the relevancy of Adam Smith’s invisible hand for the 21st century. In reality, Murray is not talking about Smith or his invisible-hand metaphor at all. The assumption beneath his conclusion that “Smith’s ideas will need some rethinking [...]

1Nov1999 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | Continued

An Open Letter to the California Legislature

As a student of public choice theory, I understand why you support SB 1241, a mandatory agency-shop bill for California State University (CSU) faculty. After all, in the words of Ambrose Bierce, “politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.” The California Faculty Association (CFA) supports you in the political marketplace, [...]

1Aug1999 | Charles W. Baird | 3 comments | Continued

To Each His Due

Tom Bethell is the author of The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages (St. Martin’s Press, 1998), from which this article is excerpted with permission of the author. Copyright © Tom Bethell. We lead lives that are so immersed in private property that we easily take its benefits for granted. Some everyday situations [...]

1Mar1999 | Tom Bethell | 0 comments | Continued

The Economic Laws of Scientific Research by Terence Kealey

New York: St. Martin’s Press • 1996 • 396 pages • $75.00 cloth; $19.95 paperback Americans have come to accept that a vast number of important functions can only be done if they are run by or at least subsidized by the state. According to conventional wisdom, government has to provide lighthouses, bus service, income [...]

1Oct1997 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued

Should Profits Be Shared with Workers?

When most people argue that firms should share profits with workers, they are not interested in the general distribution of business receipts.[1] Rather, they are pointing to firms experiencing exceptionally high profits and claiming that fairness requires that most of those profits be passed on to workers. For example, management consultant Alfie Kohn states, If [...]

1Jun1997 | Dwight R. Lee | 5 comments | Continued

Government and Governance

Dr. Foldvary is the author of Public Goods and Private Communities: The Market Provision of Social Services (Edward Elgar, 1994). He teaches economics at California State University, Hayward. Policy debates typically center around the role of markets versus the role of governments. But this is a misleading distinction. Human society always has governance. Private organizations [...]

1Jan1997 | Fred E. Foldvary | 1 comment | Continued

Consumer Information and the Calculation Debate

Dr. Pasour is professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Government intervention has been common throughout the world over the past half century, whatever the type of political and economic system. In socialist countries such as the former Soviet Union and its satellites, government assumed primary responsibility for all economic [...]

1Dec1996 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

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