All Posts Tagged With: "General Motors"
The 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 | ContinuedGM Repays Government, in a Manner of Speaking
It’s all over the news: GM repaid its loan to the federal government — early. The Obama-engineered bankruptcy worked. Did it? The story takes on a new aspect when we realize that Neil Barofsky, Treasury Special Inspector General of TARP, told both Rep. Thomas Carper of Delaware and Neil Cavuto of Fox Business News that [...]
22Apr2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedLet’s Take the “Crony” Out of “Crony Capitalism”
When Judge Richard Posner, the prolific conservative intellectual, released his book A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent Into Depression last year, you might have thought the final verdict was in: Capitalism caused the economic downturn and high unemployment. That this verdict was pronounced by someone like Posner, who is associated [...]
24Mar2010 | John Stossel | 4 comments | ContinuedBailing Out the Big Three Repeats Britain’s Mistake
A major reason for any kind of historical writing is to provide guidance for the present. As we read an account of the past, we may see similarities to the present and (we may hope) avoid repeating the same kinds of mistakes. In this sense historiography forms part of the collective memory of a society [...]
28Feb2009 | Stephen Davies | 3 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – June 2007
- Hitlers Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State
by Goetz Aly Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
- The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money
by Timothy P. Carney Reviewed by Sheldon Richman
- Income and Wealth
by Alan Reynolds Reviewed by George C. Leef
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Debacle What We Have Learned; How to Fix It
by Henry N. Butler and Larry E. Ribstein Reviewed by Barbara Hunter
- The Joy of SOX: Why Sarbanes-Oxley and Service-Oriented Architecture May Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You
by Hugh Taylor Reviewed by Barbara Hunter
Wal-Mart Wasn’t Always the Biggest
John Semmens (jsemmens@cox.net) is a transportation policy analyst at the Laissez Faire Institute in Arizona. Editor’s note: As we went to press, and as if to illustrate the point of the following article, Fortune released its 2006 list of largest corporations, showing Exxon Mobil, not Wal-Mart, on top. For all the gnashing of teeth over [...]
1Aug2006 | John Semmens | 2 comments | ContinuedA Popular Insurrection on Property Rights
The property rights issues that arise constantly in
modern life are always difficult and often
obscure. Most ordinary people understand the
importance of zoning restrictions and environmental
protection in their daily lives.They are also keenly aware
that the state exercises its eminent domain power whenever
it condemns land for a post office or a public highway.
But in general they rightly feel a little intimidated
if asked to understand the inner workings of a legal system
that is dominated at every turn by an impenetrable
jargon that even trained lawyers find it
hard to manipulate.
Protecting Property in a Post-Kelo World
Two years ago, when I began writing a book,
peoples eyes would glaze over when I told them
the subject was eminent domain, the power of
the government to take property by force on just
compensation to the owner. Rarely could I mention the
subject without having to explain it in detail, and
incredulity was a typical response to the realization that
government now takes property for private uses rather
than for the public uses allowed by the
Constitution.
Henry Ford, Upton Sinclair, and Limits on Consumer Choice
Richard Coffman and Ashley Lyman are associate professors of economics at the University of Idaho. Early in the twentieth century two prominent Americans, one a capitalist, the other a socialist, enunciated surprisingly similar views on the relationship between product differentiation and consumer welfare. The capitalist, Henry Ford, had revolutionized the young automobile industry, using mass-production [...]
1Feb2003 | and Richard B. Coffman | 1 comment | ContinuedBilly Durant: From Carriages to Cars
Like father, like son,” runs the old adage. In the case of Billy Durant, the founder of General Motors, he was like his father and also his grandfather—even though the two men were polar opposites. The Durant story shows how family and entrepreneurship blended to start the largest car company in the world.
Durant would need help from all his family and friends when he spearheaded the transition in America from carriages to cars. During the 1890s, several mechanics had tinkered with steam, electric, and gas-powered vehicles. None had made a competitive product, however, and most carriage-makers saw no threat to their industry.
1Mar1998 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 3 comments | ContinuedHenry Ford and the Triumph of the Auto Industry
Anyone strolling by 58 Bagley Street in Detroit early in the morning of June 4, 1896, would have seen a strange sight: Henry Ford, ax in hand, was smashing open the brick wall of his rented garage. He had just started his first gas-powered car, and it was too big to fit through the door. [...]
1Jan1998 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued-
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