All Posts Tagged With: "profit motive"

Disaster Response Restores Confidence in Government?

In a memorable episode of the cult-classic cartoon series “The Tick,” the title character is seen in the local café regaling fellow superheroes with his latest adventure, in which he single-handedly stopped an alien plot that would have sucked the earth into a black hole. Skeptical, one of the other heroes responds, “Can you prove [...]

4Jan2012 | Tyler Watts | 0 comments | Continued

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 and Steven Horwitz | 11 comments | Continued

Ludwig von Mises: Economist, Philosopher, Prophet

Editor’s Note: September 29 is the 130th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian economist, defender of classical liberalism, and adviser to FEE. Below is a selection of Mises’s writings published in The Freeman over the years. The Market It is customary to speak metaphorically of the automatic and anonymous forces [...]

24Aug2011 | Ludwig von Mises | 0 comments | Continued

The Virtues of Commerce: Lessons from Japan

One of the great questions of historical inquiry, which I have addressed in these pages and elsewhere, is exactly how the modern world came to be so different from what went before. Since about 1750 there has been a 16-fold increase in real wealth per capita on a global scale, something completely unprecedented that has [...]

22Jun2011 | Stephen Davies | 2 comments | Continued

Competition

Give Me a Break! Competition by John Stossel John Stossel is the hosts of Stossel on Fox Business and the author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel—Why Everything You Know is Wrong. Copyright 2009 by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. “Choice, competition, reducing costs—those are the things that [...]

23Oct2009 | John Stossel | 1 comment | Continued

Where Does Your Vote Really Count?

To encourage us to participate in the political process, we are told that every vote counts. That is true if one is adding up the total votes, but what is the likelihood of any one person’s vote affecting the outcome of a presidential election? Simply put, it is equal to the probability that the person’s [...]

1Apr2009 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

Profit: Not Just a Motive

One of the more common complaints of critics of the market is that “the profit motive” works at cross-purposes with people and firms doing “the right thing.” For example, Michael Moore’s film Sicko was motivated by his desire to take the profit motive out of health care because, in his view, the ways people seek [...]

1Mar2008 | Steven Horwitz | 34 comments | Continued

Nationalized Health Care Will Cut Costs?

A group called Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is promoting a government insurance plan to cover all Americans. In an August 13, 2003, Los Angeles Times report, the group claimed that their “single payer” plan would eliminate $200 billion a year in “administrative, marketing and other private-industry expenses.” This would save enough “to [...]

1Jan2004 | and and Gene Callahan | 15 comments | Continued

People Before Profits

Whether it’s Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan leading the Million-Man March, anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) protesters, or AIDS activists, we’re frequently treated to the chant demanding “People Before Profits.” Since profit demagoguery is a deceptively appealing tool used by scoundrels everywhere, let’s demystify the concept of profits. Let’s first get its definition out of [...]

1Nov2003 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

Lessons from the First Airplane

Mark your calendars! Prepare for commemorative events and feature stories in newspapers all across America. The date is December 17, 2003—the 100th anniversary of the first manned flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a feat engineered by two brothers named Wright. In one century the airplane went from a dream to a multibillion-dollar industry that [...]

1Jul2003 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | Continued

There’s No Such Thing as a Nonprofit Organization

Karen Selick is a lawyer in Belleville, Ontario. Copyright 2003 by Karen Selick. “Four legs good, two legs bad,” chanted the sheep in Orwell’s 1945 satire Animal Farm. In Canada today the people are chanting something slightly different: “Non-profit good, profit bad.” Take Medicare, for instance. A recent widely publicized, government-commissioned report (the Romanow report) [...]

1Jun2003 | Karen Selick | 2 comments | Continued

Why Wages Used to Be So Low

Thomas Woods holds a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and is assistant professor of history at Suffolk Community College, a unit of the State University of New York. A widespread misconception about the market economy is that it was responsible for low wage rates from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution through the early [...]

1Jun2003 | Thomas E. Woods Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

Selling History with Dolls

Many people think that markets can’t provide culture. History, for example, has to be supported through government-funded schools, endowments, and grants. In this view, markets can only destroy history: shopping-mall developers want to build on historic battlefields; priceless historic items wind up on eBay selling to collectors with piles of money but too little taste [...]

1May2003 | Andrew P. Morriss | 1 comment | Continued

Protecting Precious Resources

“If our progress is to continue, it is important that we do not forget the things which have brought us thus far.” -HENRY GRADY WEAVER, The Mainspring of Human Progress Ever since President George W. Bush proposed opening up parts of the federally owned Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for drilling, the debate has raged [...]

1Mar2002 | Scott McPherson | 0 comments | Continued

For-Profit Medicine and the Compassion Motive

Tom Palmer is fellow in social thought at the Cato Institute and a member of the board of trustees of the Foundation for Economic Education. For-profit medicine must be a terrible and immoral thing. After all, I hear it attacked as such all the time. Indeed, as I write this I’m listening to a bitter [...]

1Oct2000 | Tom G. Palmer | 3 comments | Continued

The Global Education Industry: Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries

After all the privatizations of the Thatcher years, the British-maintained school system is one of the two largest industries that still remain under state ownership and control. (The other is the National Health Service.) Both are effectively monopolistic and therefore liable to all the notorious faults of monopolies, particularly those run by the government. State [...]

1Sep2000 | Antony Flew | 0 comments | Continued

The Drug War’s Assault on Liberty

Lance Lamberton is a communications professional who was the deputy director of the White House Office of Policy Information in the Reagan administration. Special thanks to Jerry Epstein of the Drug Policy Foundation of Texas for his assistance in researching this article. Copyright 2000. In determining the proper boundaries of government action consistent with a [...]

1Aug2000 | Lance Lamberton | 4 comments | Continued
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