All Posts Tagged With: "zero-sum game"
The Best Bet Is Freedom
The greatest threat to the established political order is for people to fully realize that whenever the force of government is used to obtain special privilege, it is done at the expense of our neighbors, friends, and family.
9Nov2011 | Jason Riddle | 8 comments | ContinuedGovernment and Conflict
Human differences such as race, ethnicity, religion, and language have always been sources of conflict. Despite arguments to minimize the importance of these differences, people still exhibit preferences in these areas when choosing a spouse, friend, business partner, employee, neighborhood, and other associations. People do not associate randomly. Efforts to deny such assortative behavior in [...]
22Dec2010 | Walter E. Williams | 4 comments | ContinuedWhere Does Your Vote Really Count?
To encourage us to participate in the political process, we are told that every vote counts. That is true if one is adding up the total votes, but what is the likelihood of any one person’s vote affecting the outcome of a presidential election? Simply put, it is equal to the probability that the person’s [...]
1Apr2009 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedPoker and the Free Market
Good poker players are like entrepreneurs: You need greater skill than average to anticipate the future. As Mises so cogently puts it in Human Action, “What distinguishes the successful entrepreneur and promoter from other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be guided by what was and is, but arranges his affairs on the ground of his opinion about the future. He sees the past and the present as other people do; but he judges the future in a different way.”
20Jan2009 | Robert Stewart | 2 comments | Continued
Mr. President, Meet Mr. Smith
Since it’s obviously possible for people to reach the pinnacle of politics without seeming to know much about either economics or Smith, perhaps we’re overdue for a little reminder about both.
1Dec2008 | Lawrence W. Reed | 4 comments | ContinuedWho’s Afraid of Prosperity?
Should we worry that the people of China, India, and other undeveloped countries are getting richer? Apparently so, according to the newspapers and the “experts” they quote. They don’t come right out and say that global prosperity is bad for us. Instead they say, as the New York Times recently said, “As development rolls across [...]
1Mar2008 | John Stossel | 0 comments | ContinuedOn Misplaced Concreteness in Social Theory
The following piece will not be as abstruse as its title suggests. Rather, it results from the simple observation that, time and time again, some harmful outcome or process commonly attributed to the everyday workings of the market economy actually does exist, but it exists in the realm of the government and politics. Politicians and [...]
1May2006 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | ContinuedThere’s Still Work to Do
Free trade is again under assault. If there is one reason for the perennial attack it is likely the one Frédéric Bastiat made so much of: the failure to look for what is “unseen.” The costs of free trade (temporary job loss, closed firms) are easily traced to the free movement of goods, services, and [...]
1Apr2004 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedFrom Pennsylvania to Verdun: Friedrich List and the Origins of World War I
World War I, or the “Great War” (as most Europeans still call it), was one of the biggest disasters in human history. It not only killed and maimed millions, the cream of a generation, it also destroyed the liberal, cosmopolitan system that had been created in the nineteenth century. It was, moreover, the direct cause [...]
1Jan2004 | Stephen Davies | 0 comments | ContinuedParasite Economics
Contemporary anti-market voices characterize market economies as “parasitic” and traders as “parasites”: “Experience has shown that capitalism is the real source of basic evils in society. . . . Social parasites suddenly emerged with billions. Thus, it became clear to all that U.S. capitalism was a big trap and suicide. As a result, the majority [...]
1Jun2002 | and David M. Levy | 2 comments | ContinuedAmerica and the World’s Resources
At the heart of almost all economics is the idea of mutually beneficial exchange. When two people voluntarily engage in an activity, economists assume that both parties are better off. Otherwise, one of them would have refused the deal. It doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes—sure they do.
1Dec2001 | Russell Roberts | 5 comments | ContinuedWinners and Losers in the Transfer Game
I like lists, be they David Letterman’s Top Ten lists, the mainstream historians’ best-presidents lists, or my wife’s honey-do lists. They tell us much about the kind of society in which we live. Frequently, these lists reveal more about whoever compiled them than about whatever data is actually included on them. One list in particular [...]
1Sep2001 | Christopher Westley | 0 comments | ContinuedMaritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind by Peter Padfield
Overlook Press • 1999 • 340 pages • $35.00 Peter Padfield, according to the famed military historian John Keegan, is “the best naval historian of his generation.” But in Maritime Supremacy, Padfield goes well beyond the usual naval history to show that there was a connection between maritime supremacy and the freeing of people from [...]
1Feb2001 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomic Insecurity: Are We the Enemy?
A great paradox of our time is that former communist dictators win electoral credibility and the approval of international bankers by embracing the market while some candidates in America win considerable support and some elections by damning the market. In some eyes the global capital market is a pernicious threat to global stability. Each new [...]
1Jun2000 | Christopher Lingle | 0 comments | ContinuedPulling Us Apart
Recently, two Washington, D.C., think tanks—the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities—issued a study of the income gap between rich and poor American families titled “Pulling Apart.” According to the authors, by the late 1990s average income among families in the top 20 percent (top quintile) of the income distribution [...]
1May2000 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | ContinuedWinners and Winners
Books and articles by the dozen bemoan the gap between “winners and losers” in today’s economic boom. Even writers not associated with socialism have joined the moaners’ chorus. For example, conservative Edward Luttwak writes in his new book, trendily titled Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy, “living in a country that so greatly [...]
1Aug1999 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedFighting Back
John Landrum, a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and a former attorney, is in management at a New Orleans manufacturing company. He is the author of Out of Court: How to Protect Your Business From Litigation (Headwaters Press, 1992). I have always envied “how-to” writers and secretly hoped to become one. This is my [...]
1May1999 | John Landrum | 0 comments | Continued-
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