Posts Tagged ‘economic philosophy’
Disaster Response Restores Confidence in Government?
TYLER WATTS, THE FREEMAN In a memorable episode of the cult-classic cartoon series “The Tick,” the title character is seen in the local café regaling fellow superheroes with his latest adventure, in which he single-handedly stopped an alien plot that would have sucked the earth into a black hole. Skeptical, one of the other heroes [...]
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy land there lived the people of the North Country. Some of them made a living by plowing and disposing of the snow that seemed to fall endlessly from the skies between November and March. [...]
Super Bowl Versus Education
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Sandy Ikeda In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend recently posted. It said: “If we took all the money from Super Bowl ads and spent it on educating our kids, we wouldn’t be America.” While the statement is rather oblique, I think [...]
Taxi Regulation and the Failure of Progressivism
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Samuel R. Staley As the American people head into another election year some will be puzzled by the rise and the staying power of Progressive ideals—according to which government manages the private economy supposedly for the social welfare. But in truth they’ve been operating at the local level for more [...]
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet. And rightfully so, since he often says ridiculous things that demand a response from those who understand basic economics better than he does, despite his having won a Nobel Prize. His [...]
The Chimera of Tax Fairness
SHELDON RICHMAN, THE FREEMAN In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night President Obama played the fairness card in calling for higher taxes on upper-income people. He said: e need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes. Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: [...]
The Problem with Privatization
It's about competition. STEVEN HORWITZ, THE FREEMAN Classical liberals commonly favor “privatization” of many government activities. Their case, of course, is that the private sector would provide goods and services at lower cost and of higher quality than government can. Since classical liberals are right about this, why do I think [...]
Blowing Bubbles: Get Ready for the Next Bust
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Richard W. Fulmer Imagine you are a private in the army. Your sergeant orders you to dig a hole. When you finish, the sergeant is horrified to find that you have dug a hole. He dresses you down and then orders you to dig another hole. Insane? Welcome to today’s world of American banking. Over the course [...]
Social Cooperation, Part 2
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Sheldon Richman Last month I wrote about Ludwig von Mises’s emphasis on social cooperation as the basis of his economic philosophy, particularly in his magnum opus, Human Action. I thought I’d follow up with more thoughts on this subject. Mises was no maverick in this regard. Interest in social [...]
The Market, Equality, and Abstraction
By Carl L. Bankston III The primitive equality of humanity asserted by Rousseau and Marx seems to have been more than a philosophical speculation or golden age myth. Without individual ownership of property, and no differentiation of labor beyond gender differentiation, humans in foraging, hunter gatherer bands had no systematic basis for [...]
The Myth of the Model — Max Borders
By Max Borders Most people don’t notice it, but “model” may be the most dangerous word in the English language right now. Models justify a lot of the bad policies that have been, or soon will be, foisted on us. For example, what was used to justify the fiscal policy of the big “stimulus”? That’s right. And as I wrote this, [...]
Why Governments Hate Gold — Ron Paul
Texas Straight Talk, Ron Paul This past week several emerging and ongoing crises took attention away from the ongoing sovereign debt problems in Greece. The bailouts are merely kicking the can down the road and making things worse for taxpaying citizens, here and abroad. Greece is unfortunately not unique in its irresponsible spending habits. [...]
Federal Deposit Insurance: A Banking System Built on Sand — Warren C. Gibson
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Warren C. Gibson Federal deposit insurance grew out of a turbulent time in American history: the Great Depression. During two waves of bank failures in the 1930s an astonishing 9,000 banks closed and millions of depositors lost some or all of their savings. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) [...]
Rand Is Right — Henry Lamb
By Henry Lamb Rand Paul told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that he thought the Civil Rights Act might have gone too far when it required private businesses to serve all comers. He said he supported the Civil Rights Act, that government had every right to require non-discrimination in public facilities, but the government should not have the power to [...]
Peace, Easy Taxes, Justice — Adam Smith
Liberty Letters Quote of the Day, Adam Smith Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart the natural course are unnatural, and to [...]
Socialism vs Corporatism — Ron Paul
Texas Straight Talk with Ron Paul Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and [...]
Did Locke Really Justify Limited Government? — Joseph R. Stromberg
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Joseph R. Stromber John Locke (1632–1704) was a physician, statesman, and political philosopher, filling that last office in a dry, “empirical,” and militantly antipoetic English mode. Locke’s stock has risen and fallen over the years. Contemporaries called him a Socinian (a precursor of Unitarianism), a [...]
Groveling in the Gutter of the Gulags
By Steve Farrell Democrats In Drag, Part 4 If ever there was a person suffering under the delusion that there really was a nickel's difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich's surfing in Alvin Toffler's Third Wave and his application of the same as the launching pad of 21st century Republicanism should [...]
