All Posts Tagged With: "specialization"
A 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 Family Stone: Cavemen, Trade, and Comparative Advantage
Imagine a Stone Age family: Papa Stone, Mama Stone, and their two little pebbles. Suppose that, as befits pre-women’s-lib Neanderthals, Papa Stone is initially more competent at every prehistoric survival skill: hunting, fishing, nut-and-berry gathering, firebuilding, tool-making. Despite his superior talents, it does not make sense for other family members to sit around waiting for him to [...]
30Nov2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Importance of Subjectivism in Economics
After many years, Frédéric Bastiat remains a hero to libertarians. No mystery there. He made the case for freedom and punctured the arguments for state socialism with clarity and imagination. He spoke to lay readers with great effect. Bastiat loved the market economy, and badly wanted it to blossom in full—in France and everywhere else. [...]
23Mar2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Most Elusive Proposition
Most explanations of the division of labor are actually explanations of increased productivity due to specialization. The most common example is Adam Smith’s pin factory in The Wealth of Nations, where each worker becomes better at his job because that’s all he has to concentrate on. But the increase in wealth from the division of [...]
22Oct2010 | Manuel F. Ayau | 1 comment | ContinuedMarket-Based Higher Education
As experience continues to prove that private industry can do things more cost effectively and with better customer satisfaction than governmental entities, debate has shifted to what functions are appropriately in the government’s realm. Over the past several decades various institutions have arisen to challenge the notion that higher education is among the activities that [...]
29Jun2010 | Keith Wade | 1 comment | ContinuedAid, Trade, and Institutional Quality in Africa
Joshua Hall is pursuing his Ph.D. in economics at West Virginia University. Matthew Hisrich is a senior policy fellow with the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy in Kansas. Screenwriter Richard Curtis received a great deal of attention for his 2005 movie The Girl in the Café. The film was the big-screen component of the [...]
1Jan2007 | and Joshua C. Hall | 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 | ContinuedEconomics for the Citizen Part II
There are four classes of behavior that can be called economic behavior: production, consumption, exchange, and specialization. Production is any behavior that creates utility, that is, raises the want-satisfying capacity of something. When a mill smelts iron ore, it raises the want-satisfying capacity of the material by changing its form. The metal’s want-satisfying capacity is [...]
1Sep2005 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | ContinuedFree Trade and the Climb Out of Poverty
Over the thousands of years of human history, poverty and early death have been the norm, with comfort and longevity the exceptions. The improvements in the human condition, at least on average, seen over the course of the twentieth century dwarf the improvements of the previous centuries combined. By virtually any measure one can imagine, [...]
1Mar2005 | Steven Horwitz | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Most Elusive Proposition
Most explanations of the division of labor are actually explanations of increased productivity due to specialization. The most common example is Adam Smith’s pin factory in The Wealth of Nations, where each worker becomes better at his job because that’s all he has to concentrate on. But the increase in wealth from the division of [...]
1Oct2004 | Manuel F. Ayau | 2 comments | ContinuedThere Is No Central Plan for Winning Liberty
People who become enthusiastic supporters of the freedom philosophy often ask how the case for individual liberty, free markets, and constitutionally limited government can be successfully spread across the land. How can it triumph over the prevailing system of governmental paternalism? In frustration and despair they point out that the interventionist-welfare state has its advocates [...]
1Jan2004 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedBorn Capitalist: Free Markets and Hominid Evolution
Robert Wright (alexanderhamilton@comcast.net) is author of Wealth of Nations Rediscovered (Cambridge) and Hamilton Unbound (Greenwood), coauthor of Mutually Beneficial (NYU Press, 2003), and co-editor of History of Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance in Historical Perspective (both Pickering and Chatto, 2003). The generic term for bipedal apes, including Homo sapiens or modern humans, is hominid. Since [...]
1Jun2003 | Robert E. Wright | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Virtues of Sweatshops
Stefan Spath was formerly executive director of FEE. An acquaintance said to me the other day how appalling it is to see so many Americans revel in the gifts received during the holidays. “We should be ashamed of ourselves,” he lamented. “Most of this stuff was manufactured in sweatshops.” Such a misinformed notion shouldn’t go [...]
1Mar2002 | Stefan Spath | 2 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 | ContinuedDivide and Conquer
If I had to pick my favorite sentence in all of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action (a daunting task in a 900-page book), it would be this one: “The fact that my fellow man wants shoes as I do does not make it harder for me to get shoes, but easier” (p. 673 of the [...]
1Dec2000 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedHow the Theory of Comparative Advantage Saved My Marriage
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues. My neighbor is a kindly man with the pink and white complexion of a healthy turnip—and the generosity of a squash plant in dark loam. He has two green thumbs and big hands with long fingers obviously designed to pluck [...]
1Nov2000 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedGottfried Haberler: A Centenary Appreciation
During the first week of July in 1936, an international conference on the “Problems of Economic Change” was held in Annecy, France. It brought together such notable economists as Ludwig von Mises, Wilhelm Röpke, Oskar Morgenstern, Bertil Ohlin, Lionel Robbins, Dennis Robertson, Charles Rist, William Rappard, John B. Condliffe, John Van Sickle, Alvin Hansen, John [...]
1Jul2000 | Richard M. Ebeling | 3 comments | Continued-
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