All Posts Tagged With: "scarcity"
Economics for the Citizen
For the first time in 37 years, last fall semester I didn’t teach. No, I haven’t retired. It was my semester-off reward for two terms as department chairman at George Mason University. A break is well deserved after a chairmanship––a job not unlike that of herding cats. During fall semesters I typically teach our first-year [...]
1May2005 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Roots of Economic Understanding
The game of economics in the United States is something like a ball game where the home team fails to score. The record shows a lack of economic understanding. Despite the abundance of material splendor parading before us in the show of ostentatious consumption, we seem to be losing most of our games in terms [...]
1May2005 | F. A. Harper | 0 comments | ContinuedTwisting Economics Against Immigrants
P. Gardner Goldsmith is an independent journalist and screenwriter in New Hampshire. On January 7 President Bush announced what appeared to be a sweeping plan to grant de-facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens working in the United States. In fact, it was little more than a long-term worker-visa program that barely increased the ability [...]
1Sep2004 | P. Gardner Goldsmith | 0 comments | ContinuedFree Trade’s Never-Ending Battle
Arthur Foulkes is a freelance writer living in Indiana. Bastiat, did you live in vain? I can think of few people who did more for the cause of free trade in his lifetime than Frédéric Bastiat. A nineteenth-century French lawmaker, pamphleteer, economist, and philosopher, Bastiat is well known to free-trade advocates even today. His classic [...]
1Sep2004 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 5 comments | ContinuedAustrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom
The revival of the modern Austrian school of economics may be said to have begun 30 years ago, during the week of June 15–22, 1974, when the Institute for Humane Studies sponsored a conference on Austrian economics for about 40 participants in the small town of South Royalton, Vermont. In 1974 the Austrian school had [...]
1Jun2004 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedNationalized 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 Gene Callahan | 15 comments | ContinuedEcon 101: An Austrian Economist’s Dream
On the first day in an economics class the instructor tells us that “resources are scarce,” but human “wants are unlimited”—hence the eternal “economic problem.” How do we know resources are scarce? We can observe this fact with our senses; we can see that nothing is available in unlimited quantities everywhere and at all times. [...]
1Jan2004 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 0 comments | ContinuedTo the Medical Socialists of All Parties
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party created a small furor in Great Britain recently when its National Policy Forum issued a paper suggesting changes that might be made in the National Health Service (NHS) if the party holds power. The paper, “Improving Health and Social Care,” covers a lot of ground, but the item [...]
1Sep2003 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedProfits Versus Love
A few years back we thought about building a deck or a porch on the back of our house. But we decided against it when the estimates started coming in. They were about double what the architect had told us it would cost. Double! Had the architect misled us as a way of encouraging us [...]
1Jun2003 | Russell Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedSelf-Interest, Part 2
When he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity, for Russia, for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary. . . . But now since his marriage, [...]
1Mar2003 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | Continued"Emeril" Economics
How many times have you gone to a movie and left thinking, “That was fun. I was entertained”? Then you get the newspaper the next day and read what the movie critics have to say about the picture you just enjoyed: “Two stars. Predictable, wooden acting.” “Two thumbs down. Don’t producers and directors have any [...]
1Oct2002 | Larry Schweikart | 1 comment | ContinuedMuting Messages
As schoolchildren we learn of ancient kings who, when told of their armies’ defeats, angrily commanded that the messengers be put to death. Each of us recoils at the cruelty and pointlessness of such killings. We ask ourselves how anyone could be so foolish as to imagine that a messenger is in any way to [...]
1Oct2002 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedTime and Money: The Macroeconomics of Capital Structure by Roger W. Garrison
Routledge • 2001 • 272 pages • $99.00 Reviewed by Robert Batemarco Although it was Tolstoy who said that “the highest wisdom has but one science—the science of the whole,” these words express with uncanny accuracy the practice of the Austrian school of economics. One of the hallmarks of that school is that it sees [...]
1Jun2002 | Robert Batemarco | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Market Makes Diversity Worth Celebrating
The mantra on university campuses today is “celebrating diversity.” There are good reasons to encourage a greater appreciation of the rich diversity in the world. We are increasingly part of a global community; it’s important that we interact cooperatively with people of diverse backgrounds, understandings, skills, and motivations.
1Jan2002 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | ContinuedNo Silver Lining
We often see such comments after a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake. I never expected to see it after the horrors of September 11. But there was Paul Krugman, Ph.D. in economics and a New York Times columnist, writing it on September 14 for all the world to see: Ghastly as it may seem to say [...]
1Nov2001 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedPeaceable Conflict Resolution
Scarcity is the condition where human wants exceed the means to satisfy those wants. Human wants seldom reveal their bounds, while the means to satisfy human wants are indeed limited. As a result, scarcity’s enduring legacy is conflict, and one of the conflict issues is: who will have use rights to goods and services? A [...]
1Oct2001 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | ContinuedRights in Ideas Infringe Rights in Tangible Property
Ilana Mercer is a freelance editorial columnist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Prior to the U.S. Court of Appeal’s decision in the Napster case, all indications were that the parties to the litigation were adjusting to a reality in which copyright might become a thing of the past. TVT Records, one of the largest U.S. [...]
1Jul2001 | Ilana Mercer | 21 comments | Continued-
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