Economics

TGIF: Bastiat on the Socialization of Wealth

by Sheldon Richman March 22, 2013

That … veil which is spread before the eyes of the ordinary man, which even the attentive observer does not always succeed in casting aside, prevents us from seeing the most marvelous of all social phenomena: real wealth constantly passing from the domain of private property into the communal domain. Wealth marvelously passing from the private to the communal domain? ...

The Calling: The Challenge of Undesigned and Anonymous Order

by Steven Horwitz March 14, 2013

The spontaneous order of the market has long been an object of both theoretical and aesthetic contemplation for libertarians. From Adam Smith’s discussion of the number of hands it took to make a wool coat, to Leonard Read’s justly famous “I, Pencil,” to the examples that fill Russ Roberts’s parable novel The Price of Everything, libertarians have ...

Economic Liberty Lecture Series: Steven Landsburg

by Steven E. Landsburg March 14, 2013

On March 4, 2013, Steven Landsburg gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s “Economic Liberty Lecture Series.” The speech can viewed above in its entirety.

The Dow Jones Is Lying

by Sheldon Richman March 13, 2013

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is at a record high, and the unemployment rate has ticked down to 7.7 percent, but this is no time to celebrate. The economy is still in the doldrums. A little perspective: The news media trumpet changes in the Dow as though it tells us almost all we need to know about the economic ...

TGIF: Entrepreneurship and Social Cooperation

by Sheldon Richman March 8, 2013

We may laud the market order as an indispensable arena for large-scale social cooperation, but let’s not forget that people cannot cooperate with one another if they don’t know that the potential for mutually beneficial exchanges exists. In the real world ignorance is pervasive, and we mustn’t fall prey to the mainstream economists’ unreal assumption that full knowledge about means, ends, ...

Cutting Government Would Boost Economy

by Sheldon Richman March 7, 2013

Budget sequestration is as modest a step toward cutting Leviathan as one can imagine. Further progress will be difficult as long as people believe that slashing the size of government conflicts with reviving the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. In his recent debate on Charlie Rose, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul ...

The Minimum Wage Harms the Most Vulnerable

by Sheldon Richman February 27, 2013

Crocodile tears are flowing again for low-income people. In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour. A debate is shaping up between those who support the proposal and those who favor keeping the wage where it is today. But there are good grounds — for the sake ...

TGIF: What Support for the Minimum Wage Reveals

by Sheldon Richman February 22, 2013

Economic law is not suppressed by legislated law. — Armen Alchian Few people really understand what the great economist Armen Alchian, who died the other day at age 98, put so plainly. Considering that in the recent past over a quarter of polled economists said they saw no harm in raising the minimum wage, ...

TGIF: Mind Your Metaphors

by Sheldon Richman February 15, 2013

Metaphor consists in giving a thing a name that belongs to something else. — Aristotle, Poetics Language is metaphorical through and through. — Thomas Szasz, Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences In a lecture delivered at the London School of Economics in March 1933, F.A. Hayek, a 33-year-old economist recently appointed to the faculty, lamented that the “oldest and most general ...

The Calling: The Everyday Marvels of the Market

by Steven Horwitz February 14, 2013

Those of us who live in largely market-based economies can too easily take for granted what we might call the everyday marvels of the market. We find ourselves with things that would have amazed and mystified people just a couple of generations ago. If we think of the marvels the market delivers, we normally think of technology, but fancy ...

TGIF: Does the Market Exhibit Cooperation?

by Sheldon Richman February 8, 2013

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the verb cooperate as “To work or act together toward a common end or purpose” and “To form an association for common, usually economic, benefit.” Note that these definitions seem to require awareness about some joint effort to achieve a common objective. This would seem to leave little room for the social cooperation that libertarians ...

Religious Obstacles to Democratization in the Middle East: Past and Present

by Timur Kuran February 8, 2013

On February 5th, 2013, Timur Kuran gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s “Economic Liberty Lecture Series.” The speech can viewed above in its entirety.