All Posts Tagged With: "protectionism"

The Battle to Save American Street Vending

Larry Miller and Stanley Hambrick are classic American entrepreneurs. Both men started their businesses from scratch, and for more than 20 years they’ve been living their American Dreams. They each own and operate popular vending stands outside Turner Field in Atlanta, serving baseball fans with tasty snacks, fully licensed Braves merchandise, parody shirts, and other [...]

26Oct2011 | Bob Ewing | 11 comments | Continued

Missing Samuel Tilden

If you’re under 50 you probably don’t remember when telephone “numbers” weren’t all numbers. From the 1920s until the mid-1960s most phone “numbers” began with two letters corresponding to certain digits on a common telephone dial. KL7-1234, for example, was read as “Klondike 7-1234.” My family’s number was TI3-8597. The letters were meant to honor [...]

26Oct2011 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | Continued

Eugenics: Progressivism’s Ultimate Social Engineering

According to the received account of the Progressive Era, an enlightened government swept in and regulated markets for goods, labor, and capital, thereby protecting the hapless masses from the vicissitudes of unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism. The Progressives had faith that experts would rise above self-interest and implement wise plans to create a great society. The resulting [...]

21Sep2011 | and and Art Carden | 21 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

The Cancer of Regulation

Politicians care about poor people. I know because they always say that. But then why do they make it so hard for the poor to escape poverty? Licensing, for example, prices poor people out of business. Take taxis: in New York City, you have to buy a license, or “medallion.” New York restricts the number [...]

24Aug2011 | John Stossel | 3 comments | Continued

A Tale of Two Situations

Once upon a time selling a chicken was fraught with few if any legal implications. Remodeling a shed was equally simple from a regulatory standpoint. Today, however, we live in more enlightened times. Protected from our wayward desires by an empowered bureaucracy, we can rest easier knowing that decisions like what we eat and where [...]

24Aug2011 | Paul Schwennesen | 4 comments | Continued

The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History

In my M.B.A. economics class I emphasize the Austrian view of entrepreneurship, noting that successful entrepreneurs are rewarded for moving resources from lower-valued to higher-valued uses in a free market. Alas I also spend time explaining “political entrepreneurship”: exploiting connections with “the right people” to profit by moving resources from uses consumers would value highly [...]

22Jun2011 | William L. Anderson | 5 comments | Continued

Medical Consumers or Wards of the State?

Paul Krugman wants to know: “How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as ‘consumers’?” Let’s concede for argument’s sake there is something unattractive about viewing patients as consumers. Krugman writes, “Medical care, after all, is an area in which crucial decisions—life and death decisions—must be made. [...]

22Jun2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued

The Wrong Lesson from Egypt

One wrong conclusion being drawn from last winter’s popular uprising against the dictatorship in Egypt is that the American government could ignore such things if we were “energy independent.” (It’s unclear if this means independent of Middle Eastern oil or completely independent.) A moment’s reflection should be enough to jettison that thought, but even if [...]

25May2011 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | Continued

America’s Turning Point

The Civil War represents the simultaneous culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution. Four successive ideological surges had previously defined American politics: the radical republican movement that had spearheaded the revolution itself; the subsequent Jeffersonian movement that had arisen in reaction to the Federalist State; the Jacksonian movement that followed the War of 1812; and [...]

23Mar2011 | Jeffrey Rogers Hummel | 22 comments | Continued

Tariffs and Freedom

A historical episode that opponents of consumer sovereignty—that is, opponents of free trade—frequently cite to support their case for high tariffs is late nineteenth-century America. Pat Buchanan, for example, in his book The Great Betrayal asserts about the 1800s that “Behind a tariff wall . . . the United States had gone from an agrarian [...]

22Dec2010 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 19 comments | Continued

Rules, 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 and Thomas Snyder | 4 comments | Continued

Entrepreneurs Under Attack

Every day, federal, state, and local governments stifle small businesses to privilege well-connected incumbent companies. It’s a system of protectionism for influential insiders who don’t want competition. Every locality has its share of business moguls who are cozy with politicians. Together, they use the power of government to keep competition down and prices high. The [...]

24Nov2010 | John Stossel | 10 comments | Continued

Mad About Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization

Free trade is the consumer’s best friend and a great contributor to peace. Pressing those ideas home is Cato Institute trade expert Daniel Griswold’s challenge in this book. He is mad for trade, while too many others are mad against trade. As an example of the latter, consider radio host and writer Lou Dobbs, who [...]

25Aug2010 | William H. Peterson | 1 comment | Continued

Why Globalization Works

Look at the foes of economic globalization and you’ll find a curious coalition. Some are left-wingers who oppose globalization because they oppose capitalism. But others are right-wing protectionists who don’t like foreign competition. The strength of the anti-globalist coalition has waxed and waned over time, but there is still a large number of people who [...]

13Jul2010 | Martin Morse Wooster | 0 comments | Continued

Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas

It looks like a book. It’s priced like a book. It’s sold in bookstores and carried by libraries. But it’s not really a book. Exporting America is merely an extended, furious yelp by CNN’s Lou Dobbs. It has no index and no bibliography. Nor does it have a single citation to any of the alleged [...]

10Jul2010 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 5 comments | Continued

Tariffs are Legal Plunder

Everybody has an issue he reacts to most intensely. [Frederic] Bastiat’s was tariffs. And his most barbed comments were directed against those who favored governmental protection of national industry from foreign competition. He thought this legal method of cheating consumers by keeping prices above the market was a perfect example of how governments plunder their [...]

7Jul2010 | Dean Russell | 1 comment | Continued
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