All Posts Tagged With: "laissez-faire"

The 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 | Continued

The Many Monopolies

We libertarians defend economic freedom, not big business. We advocate free markets, not the corporate economy. And what would freed markets look like? Nothing like the controlled markets we have today. But how often do we hear mass unemployment, financial crisis, ecological catastrophe, and the economic status quo attributed to the voraciousness of “unfettered free [...]

24Aug2011 | Charles Johnson | 19 comments | Continued

No Laissez Faire There

What’s often unappreciated is that writers sympathetic to the free market have disparaged the Gilded Age as broadly illiberal and contrary to the spirit of free enterprise.

6May2011 | Sheldon Richman | 18 comments | Continued

Adam Smith Reveals His (Invisible) Hand

“Adam Smith had one overwhelmingly important triumph: he put into the center of economics the systematic analysis of the behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interest under conditions of competition.”—George Stigler (emphasis added) Critics of laissez faire—from Cambridge economic historian Emma Rothschild to British Labor Party leader Gordon Brown—have recently attempted to wrestle Adam Smith out [...]

21Apr2011 | Mark Skousen | 2 comments | Continued

The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas

“The focus of this book,” according to its author, “is the interplay of self-interest, market, and the state in economic analysis from the mid-nineteenth century up through the latter stages of the twentieth.” Much of this well-written study, however, is devoted to describing the intellectual origins of the approach to political economy known today as [...]

24Feb2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 0 comments | Continued

Business to Be Asked for Jobs Ideas

“President Obama will challenge business and labor leaders today to generate ideas for creating jobs, sustaining the economic recovery and making America more competitive.” (USA Today) Who will say, like those French businessmen long ago, “Laissez faire, laissez passer!”? FEE Timely Classic “Laissez Faire as a Development Policy” by John Semmens

24Feb2011 | Foundation for Economic Education | 2 comments | Continued

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

The list of complaints against laissez-faire capitalism is long, including such contradictory notions as its guilt in impoverishing the masses and its role in enabling the poor to escape their “proper” station in life. In World on Fire, Amy Chua adds to the list, arguing that capitalism, when combined with democratization in economically developing nations, [...]

2Jul2010 | George C. Leef | 2 comments | Continued

The Case for Big Government

Could it be that our already immense government is still too small? That’s what some people, including economic journalist Jeff Madrick, would have us believe. The first sentence of The Case for Big Government reads, “It is conventional wisdom in America today that high levels of taxes and government spending diminish America’s prosperity.” While this [...]

20May2010 | Robert Batemarco | 1 comment | Continued

Let’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 | Continued

A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression

Richard Posner’s latest book belongs to the fast-expanding cottage industry of financial crisis books. A federal judge with a grounding in economics, Posner would seem to be an ideal person to tackle this complicated subject. Alas, he provides neither fresh material nor an interesting perspective. Posner describes well-known events—the failure of investment banks Bear Stearns [...]

5Jan2010 | Chidem Kurdas | 1 comment | Continued

Are the Rich Necessary? Great Economic Arguments and How They Reflect Our Personal Values

George Leef is book review editor of The Freeman. In my high school days I had a friend who had been thoroughly imbued with the socialist mindset. He was willing to concede there might be some adverse consequences if the government went too far toward equality and economic control, but was adamantly in favor of [...]

2Mar2009 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

“The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution” (Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos, p. 28).

I have to confess that I really do want to like the Sarkozy’s.  I find President Sarkozy endlessly entertaining, though sometimes more for gaffes that would be simply unheard of in U.S. politics than for his policy (take, for instance, his recent insult sans apology episode).  And Carla Bruni, though her past may not speak [...]

21Jan2009 | Margaret Morgan | 0 comments | Continued

Free Market vs. Corporatism

Roderick Long, professor of philosophy at Auburn University and a Freeman author, has an excellent article at Cato Unbound on why libertarians are too often mistaken for defenders of corporatism.  This error is tragic not only because it is an error — no two things could differ more starkly than laissez faire and the corporate [...]

11Nov2008 | Sheldon Richman | 9 comments | Continued

Freedom Works: The Case of Hong Kong

Hong Kong has an impressive reputation for economic freedom and classical-liberal virtues. In a series of articles, Milton Friedman used Hong Kong to show how the power of free markets combined with little else can create wealth, pointing out that its per-capita income rose from 28 percent of Britain’s in 1960 to 137 percent of [...]

1Nov2008 | Andrew P. Morriss | 6 comments | Continued

Commerce, Markets, and Peace: Richard Cobden’s Enduring Lessons

Edward Stringham is a visiting associate professor of economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. A longer version of this article won second prize (faculty division) in the 2003 Olive W. Garvey Fellowship Program for the Independent Institute and is reprinted in Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism, edited by Robert Higgs and [...]

1Oct2008 | Edward P. Stringham | 0 comments | Continued

Pundit in Wonderland

In one of those boilerplate articles about the deteriorating American middle class, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson last September pointed out that a new Pew Research Center survey revealed that an increasing number of people think we live in a country divided into “haves” and “have-nots” and that more people now put themselves in the [...]

1Nov2007 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

A Democracy of Dunces

When pro-free-market critics of democracy explain why laissez faire is not a winning election issue, they usually say that voters have no incentive to research economic policy because one vote won’t sway the election and the expected payoff to any individual voter is infinitesimal. So, quite rationally, they vote on other bases. This “rational ignorance” [...]

1Nov2007 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | Continued
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