All Posts Tagged With: "innovation"
Going to Graceland
A recent trip to Memphis took me to Elvis Presley’s famed home, Graceland. Touring Presley’s mansion and its grounds is fascinating for fans of his music, and the Presley estate has done a marvelous job in capturing his music and life. But visiting Graceland mostly interested me as an economist. Walking through the home of [...]
4Jan2012 | Andrew P. Morriss | 9 comments | ContinuedThe Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism
What do the following have in common: hungry Venezuelans, starving North Koreans, ecological devastation in the former Soviet Union, and functionally illiterate students in Washington, D.C., high schools? Give up? They are all consequences of socialism. In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, economics professor and National Review editor Kevin Williamson gives the [...]
4Jan2012 | George C. Leef | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism
The eminent UCLA historian Joyce Appleby concludes The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism by referring to the persistent nostalgia for socialism: “As one sufferer from Yugonostalgia explained it, ‘in Yugoslavia people had fun. It was a system for lazy people; if you were good or bad, you still got paid. Now, everything is about [...]
26Oct2011 | Leonard P. Liggio | 2 comments | ContinuedAre You a Millionaire?
Here’s an excellent video on the nature of progress from The Fund for American Studies.
11Jul2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedHow Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market
Advocates of free-market capitalism commonly believe in the legitimacy of intellectual property (IP) because IP rights are thought to be important to a system of private property. But are they? There are good reasons to think that IP is not actually property—that it is actually antithetical to a private-property, free-market order. By intellectual property, I [...]
25May2011 | N. Stephan Kinsella | 56 comments | ContinuedIntellectual Property: Silly or Sinister?
Imagine a land recently seized from a foreign power where there is little law and a lot of gold. Since nature abhors a vacuum, prospectors quickly adopt the conventions of private property: Whoever is first to put four stakes in the ground is the proud owner of the land and any gold beneath. This would [...]
22Dec2010 | David K. Levine | 33 comments | ContinuedPlenty to Be Thankful For
Despite all of that gloom and doom, there’s still lots of good news to be found.
25Nov2010 | Steven Horwitz | 7 comments | ContinuedRules, Regulation, and Mixed Martial Arts
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) illustrates well the benefits of limiting rules and regulations, and provides an example of immense success despite—rather than because of—government intervention. The UFC, which hosts mixed martial arts (MMA) events, has grown immensely popular in recent years. In the early years, the mid-1990s, the sport had a limited number of [...]
24Nov2010 | and Thomas Snyder | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776–1914
For anyone interested in technology, the Industrial Revolution, or technical progress more broadly, this is a wonderful book. When I compare how people lived, say, in 1809 to how we live today, I am continually stunned by all that has happened. From horse-drawn carriages to iPhones in two centuries. It is hard to be an [...]
22Oct2010 | David K. Levine | 0 comments | ContinuedIs the Decline of Newspapers a Market Failure?
Over the past year there has been a flurry of government-related activity aimed at stopping the decline of the newspaper business. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has held three series of workshops on the subject, drawing dozens of top academics, national politicians, business leaders from companies like Google and News Corporation, and the FTC commissioners [...]
22Sep2010 | Edward J. López | 6 comments | ContinuedThe Paradox of the Welfare State
Welfare states face an inescapable paradox: The level of production needed to sustain a welfare state cannot be sustained by a welfare state. This paradox is created by policies that encourage the redistribution and consumption of wealth while discouraging its creation. In the face of such perverse incentives, living standards must fall even though, for [...]
22Sep2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 24 comments | ContinuedRegulatory Failure by the Numbers
Between the current financial mess and the debate over carbon dioxide emissions controls, there is a lot of talk about regulation these days. We are told, for example, that the recession would have been prevented if proper regulations had been in place. While it is true that (by definition) the “right” regulations would have prevented [...]
25Aug2010 | and Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedWhy Do Futurists Get So Much Wrong?
The Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann once walked into the colloquium room at New York University, where the blackboard displayed this quotation: “When it comes to the future, one word says it all: You never know. – Y. Berra.” Having built much of his economics on the unknowability of the future, Lachmann noticed the quote. However, [...]
25Aug2010 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | ContinuedTo Understand Change, Learn History
Judging by the headlines and recent political campaigns, America’s economy is undergoing one of those rapid and fundamental changes that augur well for the incomes of Americans — but not so well for the prospects of restraining politicians from counterproductive intervention to “save jobs.” According to the data, my home state of North Carolina lies [...]
6Jul2010 | John Hood | 0 comments | ContinuedThey Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators
What a stunning book! They Made America is a big glorious coffee-table kind of book that deserves to be picked up and read, not just dusted occasionally. Harold Evans (actually, Sir Harold—this former editor of the London Times was knighted in 2004) has given us a marvelous compendium of short biographies on American inventors and [...]
18May2010 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedThe End of Medicine: Not With a Bang, But a Whimper
Social change can be revolutionary, sudden, and swift, but more commonly it moves at a glacial pace. Yet glaciers work great change, and great damage, given enough time. There has been much talk of people leaving the medical profession if government further bureaucratizes health care. But the odds are great that there won’t be any [...]
24Mar2010 | Theodore Levy | 6 comments | ContinuedHow “Intellectual Property” Impedes Competition
Any consideration of “intellectual property rights” must start from the understanding that such “rights” undermine genuine property rights and hence are illegitimate in terms of libertarian principle. Real, tangible property rights result from natural scarcity and follow as a matter of course from the attempt to maintain occupancy of physical property that cannot be possessed [...]
23Sep2009 | Kevin A. Carson | 13 comments | Continued-
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