All Posts Tagged With: "profit motive"
Free Markets and Highest Valued Use
Do free markets allocate resources to their highest valued use? It would seem that for the readers of Ideas on Liberty, the answer is a “no-brainer.” Indeed, the idea that voluntary exchange channels resources to where the value of output will be greatest has traditionally been one of the foundational arguments for a free-market economy. [...]
1May2000 | Roy Cordato | 1 comment | ContinuedA Lesson in Political Management
Suppose you have just learned that the house you live in has leaky water pipes. If not attended to, the damage done by the leaks will compound and the value of the house will decline. Would you spend whatever it took to fix the problem? Or would you go out and buy an expensive new [...]
1Dec1999 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedOpportunity Cost and Hidden Inventions
Few people think about opportunity cost as systematically as economists do, but all of us are constantly guided by the opportunity costs we face. If, as you are reading this article, you learn that someone a few blocks away is giving $1,000 to anyone who comes by, I predict with confidence that you will quickly [...]
1Apr1999 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | ContinuedEnviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well by Terry A. Anderson and Donald R. Leal
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. • 1997 • 189 pages • $52.50 cloth; $16.95 paperback Writing about Austrian economics and the market process, Israel Kirzner explains how entrepreneurs play a crucial role in discovering products, markets, and processes for improving human welfare (Journal of Economic Literature, March 1997). The interesting aspect of all this is [...]
1Feb1999 | Bruce Yandle | 0 comments | ContinuedNature’s Entrepreneurs
Terry Anderson is a professor of economics at Montana State University and executive director of the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. Donald Leal is a senior associate of PERC. This article was adapted from chapter one of their book Enviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well. Copyright 1998 Rowman & Littlefield. “We have our [...]
1Nov1998 | Terry L. Anderson | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Fine Art of Conservation
Bernie Jackson is an electrical engineer and freelance writer from California. Imagine being a fly on the wall in an upscale auction house. You witness a parade of unique, priceless merchandise—items whose value cannot be explained by material usefulness alone. Their value arises from some combination of aesthetics, historical importance, pride of ownership, and a [...]
1Oct1998 | Bernie Jackson | 0 comments | ContinuedCapitalism: Discrimination’s Implacable Enemy
John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation, a nonprofit think tank in North Carolina, and the author of The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good (Free Press), from which this article is adapted. Do racial minorities, women, and other groups need the government to protect them against prejudice and discrimination? To hear [...]
1Aug1998 | John Hood | 3 comments | ContinuedWe Can Do Better than Government Inspection of Meat
Last year’s news reports of tainted beef focused public attention on the safety of the meat supply. In August 1997, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman forced Hudson Foods to recall 25 million pounds of hamburger meat produced at the firm’s state-of-the-art plant in Nebraska. The nation’s largest beef recall occurred after several Colorado consumers became [...]
1May1998 | E.C. Pasour Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedBill Gates, Philanthropist
Let’s review the familiar refrains on charitable giving. Social democrats criticize tycoons for not giving more of their wealth to charities. Business people are repeatedly admonished to “give something back.” The implication is that commercial profits are taken from others, and decency demands that the lucky takers return at least part of their booty to [...]
1Jan1998 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedHenry Grady Weaver’s Classic Vision of Freedom
John Hood is the president of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the author of The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good (Free Press, 1996). This essay is an expanded version of Mr. Hood’s introduction to the third edition of The Mainspring of Human Progress by Henry Grady Weaver, published [...]
1Aug1997 | John Hood | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Entrepreneur on the Heroic Journey
Ms. Allen is a teacher-on-special-assignment in the Education Alliance of Pueblo, Colorado. Dr. Lee is Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Georgia. What do you want to be when you grow up? was a question that adults regularly posed to all of us when we were young. Generally, even as children, we imagined [...]
1Apr1997 | Candace Allen | 1 comment | ContinuedKnowledge, Ignorance, and Government Schools
The president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker, put it well: “It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve: [...]
1Jun1995 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedCapitalism Is Merciless to Capitalists
Mr. Levite is a freelance writer residing in San Francisco, California. Attending college in the late 1960s left me with many unique memories. Among these was the economics class in which the instructor told the students that such firms as IBM and Xerox were so huge and powerful that they dominated their markets. Smaller competitors [...]
1Jun1995 | Allan Levite | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy Socialism Failed
Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery. In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism [...]
1Jun1995 | Mark J. Perry | 240 comments | ContinuedSpending Money Freely
In the last year, I have begun to buy things without using coins, paper money, a credit card, or a checkbook. You may begin to do likewise next year, or you may have begun a few years ago, though neither of us could have done it ten years back. I’ve actually learned two new ways [...]
1May1995 | Lawrence H. White | 0 comments | ContinuedGovernment in Business
In the midst of nationwide prosperity, some economic and social problems keep nagging at the public. All over the country, they take the same form. What are they? Traffic congestion, inadequate roads, overcrowded schools, juvenile delinquency, water shortages. Such matters have proven troublesome in many ways; above all, they seem to breed conflicts.
1Sep1956 | Murray N. Rothbard | 10 comments | ContinuedServing Others
Mr. Fairless is Chairman of the Executive Advisory Committee, United States Steel Corporation. Ours would indeed be a sorry world if self-interest did not activate individuals to serve one another. As far as I know, there are only two basic motivations that cause you and me and other people to serve our neighbors voluntarily and [...]
1Jul1956 | Benjamin F. Fairless | 0 comments | Continued-
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