All Posts Tagged With: "technology"
Going to Graceland
A recent trip to Memphis took me to Elvis Presley’s famed home, Graceland. Touring Presley’s mansion and its grounds is fascinating for fans of his music, and the Presley estate has done a marvelous job in capturing his music and life. But visiting Graceland mostly interested me as an economist. Walking through the home of [...]
4Jan2012 | Andrew P. Morriss | 9 comments | ContinuedA Simple Solution
There is always an easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong. —H. L. Mencken I have devised a simple plan for improving Americans’ health by drastically reducing everyone’s weight, thereby significantly increasing longevity and reducing medical costs. All we need to do is revalue the pound. Instead of a pound being [...]
24Aug2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 1 comment | ContinuedPlenty to Be Thankful For
Despite all of that gloom and doom, there’s still lots of good news to be found.
25Nov2010 | Steven Horwitz | 7 comments | ContinuedThe Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776–1914
For anyone interested in technology, the Industrial Revolution, or technical progress more broadly, this is a wonderful book. When I compare how people lived, say, in 1809 to how we live today, I am continually stunned by all that has happened. From horse-drawn carriages to iPhones in two centuries. It is hard to be an [...]
22Oct2010 | David K. Levine | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy Do Futurists Get So Much Wrong?
The Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann once walked into the colloquium room at New York University, where the blackboard displayed this quotation: “When it comes to the future, one word says it all: You never know. – Y. Berra.” Having built much of his economics on the unknowability of the future, Lachmann noticed the quote. However, [...]
25Aug2010 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | ContinuedSeeing the Big Picture Is Child’s Play
In the face of the daily doom-and-gloom report we call the news, authors such as Matt Ridley perform an important service by showing us the big picture.
1Jul2010 | Steven Horwitz | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Green-Economy Mirage
If you got an email offering you the chance to invest in a business that would create new profitable industries, employ millions of people, reduce energy consumption without reducing quality of life, and improve environmental quality, would you be skeptical? And if the email went on to claim that the technologies to do all this [...]
5Jan2010 | Andrew P. Morriss | 15 comments | ContinuedA Manifesto for Media Freedom
Americans are blessed with access to an unprecedented variety of media–not to mention ways in which information can be stored and the points of view and ownership interests represented. As documented in the brisk book A Manifesto for Media Freedom, this cornucopia of media options has led not to celebration of the marvelous diversity that [...]
23Sep2009 | Brian Doherty | 0 comments | ContinuedTechnology in Perspective
What role does technology play in creating prosperity? Recently, I was involved in a heated e-mail debate on this question. Although technology is unquestionably important, it is not the key to prosperity. Much more fundamental and vital is the institution of private property fashioned and enforced by a genuine rule of law. Those who disagree [...]
1Jan2003 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Happened to China?
Asked to pick from among the world’s nations the one with the best prospects for years ahead, an early fifteenth-century futurist would have bet on China. All the indicators pointed to it as destined to outpace every other civilization on the planet. Among the things the futurist might have noted was Chinese technology. In 1400 [...]
1Aug2002 | Harold B. Jones Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedNo Bad Thing at All
Ralph Hood is a writer in Huntsville, Alabama. One of the best observations I ever heard on the free market came from a redneck aircraft mechanic named Claudie. It was sometime back in the seventies at Huntsville (Alabama) Aviation Corporation. I sold airplanes; Claudie fixed them. I walked into the shop one day and Claudie [...]
1Oct2001 | Ralph Hood | 0 comments | ContinuedNonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright
Vintage Books • 2001 • 448 pages • $15.00 paperback In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright argues that gains from trade, or “nonzero” transactions, is the motivating force driving human history. Because of the advantages of engaging in nonzero-sum transactions, it was virtually inevitable that living organisms would evolve whose primary function [...]
1Apr2001 | Todd Zywicki | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Luckiest Generation
W. Michael Cox, senior vice president and chief economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Richard Alm, a business writer, are co-authors of Myths of Rich and Poor: Why We’re Better Off Than We Think. Meet the Luckiest Generation. When it comes to the material facts of life, the young men and women [...]
1Mar2001 | and W. Michael Cox | 1 comment | ContinuedDownsizing, 1860s-Style: Lessons from the Pony Express
Larry Schweikart teaches history at the University of Dayton. No image in the 1990s captured the apparent weaknesses of the capitalist system more than that of mid-level managers “downsized” out of their jobs. Here were successful executives with well-paying jobs and solid retirement prospects suddenly told that they had no place in the company and [...]
1Aug2000 | Larry Schweikart | 0 comments | ContinuedTechnology, Progress, and Freedom
Edward Younkins is professor of accountancy and business administration at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia. Technology represents man’s attempt to make life easier. Technological advances improve people’s standard of living, increase leisure time, help eliminate poverty, and lead to a greater variety of products. Progress allows people more time to spend on higher [...]
1Jan2000 | Edward W. Younkins | 1 comment | ContinuedOpening Pandora’s Box
Dan Fylstra has been involved in the PC industry since its inception. He was founding associate editor of BYTE Magazine in 1975, and founder of VisiCorp in 1979. He is currently president of the PC software vendor Frontline Systems, Inc. This is excerpted from a longer “open letter” distributed on the Internet. Last year, Netscape [...]
1Nov1998 | Dan Fylstra | 0 comments | ContinuedTechnology and Happiness
Allan Levite is a freelance writer residing in San Francisco, California. While surfing the Internet one day, I chanced upon an article by Jay Hanson, titled “The Woes of Modern Society.”[1] In most respects it was standard environmentalist fare, bemoaning modern technology and the harm it has allegedly done to the earth and to humanity. [...]
1Aug1998 | Allan Levite | 2 comments | Continued-
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