Free Market

You’re Not Fired

by Laurence M. Vance October 3, 2023

At the end of every episode of “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump’s reality TV show, he would utter his signature catchphrase “You’re Fired!” Yet, it came as no surprise that Trump, when speaking recently in Michigan, where the United Auto Workers (UAW) recently went on strike, didn’t dare mention anyone being fired for refusing to work. UAW members voted about 97 ...

The Free Market Can and Should Be Absolute

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2022

The 1932 Democratic Party platform advocated “the removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and natural resources in the common interest.” But since the advent of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal — a raw deal for Americans that raised taxes; forced most manufacturing industries into cartels with codes that regulated prices; paid ...

Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich, Part 2

by George Leef July 1, 2022

Part 1 | Part 2 Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich — How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden (University of Chicago Press, 2020). McCloskey and Carden also devote many chapters to refuting mistaken ideas about the reasons for the Great Enrichment. Many economists have explained it as a ...

Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich, Part 1

by George Leef June 1, 2022

Part 1 | Part 2 Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich — How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Throughout almost all of human history, people lived miserably — far worse than even Thomas Hobbes famously said. Improvements? There weren’t any. Happiness? That ...

Human Irrationality and Free Markets

by Antony Sammeroff May 1, 2022

If everyone was irrational all of the time, we would be in big trouble. You’d never know when someone was suddenly going to swerve off the road for no apparent reason and drive into a building, or start babbling to you in tongues over the phone when all you wanted to do was order a pizza. That being said, people ...

Privatize Infrastructure

by Scott McPherson March 4, 2022

Two seemingly unrelated commentaries, from separate sources and published two weeks apart, reveal everything wrong with expensive (and never-ending) infrastructure spending and provide a glimpse at the reasons government shouldn't be in that business to begin with. Better understanding of government's proper role in the lives of a free people might also help with the issue ...

Once Again, There’s No Such Thing as Market Fundamentalism

by George Leef November 12, 2021

In September 2021, I wrote a two-part article for Future of Freedom entitled “There’s No Such Thing as Market Fundamentalism.” My argument was that people who say that those of us who favor liberty are just “fundamentalists” are mistaken. Fundamentalist thinking involves the acceptance of some belief simply because some authority has said that it is ...

Resisting the Market Process Undermines Freedom and Prosperity

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2021

The free market often seems a hard sell. The resistance and opposition to its seemingly straightforward case emerges and persists, over and over again. It is all very strange, since, after all, how many people do not want the personal liberty to make their own choices about what to buy, where to live, and the amount they are willing ...

There’s No Such Thing as “Market Fundamentalism,” Part 1

by George Leef August 1, 2021

Part 1 | Part 2 Zealots who want to force others to conform to their beliefs often exhibit a fundamentalist mindset. That is to say, they are utterly certain of the rectitude of their beliefs on the basis of some unchallengeable text, either sacred or secular. They assert what they believe to be true rather than engage in rational ...

Should There Be Equal Pay for Equal Work?

by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2021

Although I rarely watch cable television, I happened to tune in to an episode of Mysteries at the Museum on the Travel Channel the other day. The segment I saw was about Mary Elizabeth “Lizzie” Murphy (1894–1964), the first female professional baseball player. The diminutive first baseman from Warren, Rhode Island, who was known professionally as Spike Murphy, billed ...

Free Labor Markets vs. Biden’s Push for Compulsory Unionism

by Richard M. Ebeling January 29, 2021

We have now entered the Joe Biden presidency in the United States. Calling for a restored unity among the American people, the new president has come out of the starting gate with a plethora of executive orders and legislative policy proposals being sent to the Democratic Party-controlled Congress. Virtually all of them involve increased government spending, regulation, and planning ...

Don’t Confuse Free Markets with the Interventionist State

by Richard M. Ebeling December 4, 2020

When most people put on their “reality” hats about politics, there are few among them who do not cynically see the power-lusting, the corruption, and the hypocrisy in most of what is said and done by those running for or sitting in political office. A constant point of dispute and disagreement is over how and why it is that ...