All Posts Tagged With: "price system"
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 | ContinuedA Return to Gold?
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society. . . .The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the [...]
30Nov2011 | and John L. Chapman | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Virtue of Market Inefficiency
A living economy needs to create inefficiencies, and lots of them, to set the stage for greater efficiency and ongoing innovation.
28Jun2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 5 comments | ContinuedPrivate Investment and Public “Investment”
Politicians are fond of telling the public that we must “invest” in this program or that—be it education; health care; make-work infrastructure projects like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”; $50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa; $3.4 million for a tunnel to allow turtles to cross under a highway in Florida; $1.8 million for swine [...]
22Jun2011 | Adam B. Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedIs Ethanol a Good Choice for Consumers?
It’s is a good deal — for ethanol producers — but it destroys the wealth of others.
26Jan2011 | William L. Anderson | 12 comments | ContinuedInside Insider Trading
Insider trading is something we hear a lot about these days. To most people, the practice smells of foul play, and federal law restricts it. But the inside story of insider trading is something very different, as we shall see. The alleged ill effects on shareholders in particular and on the economy in general are [...]
22Dec2010 | Warren C. Gibson | 23 comments | ContinuedTrading for Security
Americans tolerate a costly global national-security apparatus in part because they believe the country would be economically vulnerable without it. After all, we use resources from all over the world—oil being only the most prominent example. What if an embargo cut us off from supplies? Anyone expressing skepticism about this is sure to be confronted [...]
24Nov2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedAre Profits Fit Only for Serfs and Slaves?
In their recent book, From Poverty to Prosperity, Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz relate that ancient Romans believed it honorable to gain wealth through battle and conquest, but dishonorable to profit by engaging in commerce. Such work was considered so demeaning that it was left to the children of freed slaves. Because of the associated [...]
29Jun2010 | Richard W. Fulmer | 6 comments | ContinuedCapital Letters
Are Corporations Islands of “Calculational Chaos”? According to Kevin Carson (“Hierarchy or the Market,” The Freeman, April 2008), a private business corporation is in effect “an island of calculational chaos in the market economy.” . . . Carson writes, “Those at the top make decisions concerning a production process about which they likely know as [...]
1Sep2008 | FEE Admin | 1 comment | ContinuedThe True Price of a Hybrid
Prices are amazing. They are only little numbers, but they are so very useful. An economist will tell you that prices are the relative scarcities of items measured in monetary terms. The average businessman, if he ever really thinks about them, might say that they indicate which resources to use and which to avoid. Prices [...]
1Sep2007 | Paul Cwik | 5 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – December 2006
- The Ethics of the Market
by John Meadowcroft Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
- Peddling Panaceas: Popular Economists _in the New Deal Era
by Gary Dean Best Reviewed by Burton Folsom, Jr
- Philosophers of Capitalism: _Menger, Mises, Rand, and Beyond
by Edward W. Younkins Reviewed by Aeon J. Skoble
- Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in _Black America
by John McWhorter Reviewed by George C. Leef
A Home with a View . . . and a Higher Property Tax
Gardner Goldsmith is a radio talk-show host in New Hampshire. It took me years to understand what my father meant when, on being confronted by a disagreement in taste or talking about the price of a product, he would suddenly speak in Latin: De gustibus non est disputandum. For someone who took four years of [...]
1Sep2006 | P. Gardner Goldsmith | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomics for the Citizen: Part V
We’re all grossly ignorant about most things that we use and encounter in our daily lives, but each of us is knowledgeable about tiny, relatively inconsequential things. For example, a baker might be the best baker in town, but he’s grossly ignorant about virtually all the inputs that allow him to be the best baker. [...]
1Aug2006 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedLudwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part II
Mises’s defense of classical liberalism against the various forms of collectivism was not limited “merely” to the economic benefits of private property.
1Jun2006 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – June 2006
The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly — reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein — reviewed by Gary M. Galles
Water for Sale: How Business and the Market Can Resolve the Worlds Water Crisis by Fredrik Segerfeldt — reviewed by George C. Leef
Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity by James Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee — reviewed by Tom Lehman
1Jun2006 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedThe High Cost of Misunderstanding Gasoline Economics
National emergencies, wars, natural disasters—all these things tend to bring about expanded government power.1 Hurricane Katrina was no exception. In addition to promising to spend billions of dollars of other people’s money allegedly to “rebuild” New Orleans and other stricken areas, politicians have been equally generous with other people’s gasoline supplies. In many states, anyone [...]
1Apr2006 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 0 comments | ContinuedMitigating 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-
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