‘Steven Horwitz’ Archives
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. [...]
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 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 [...]
Not Just What, But How
ECONOMIC THEORY, STEVEN HORWITZ There are a variety of ways to look at the fundamental problem that all economies must solve. One way is to talk about the responsiveness of producers to consumers. In this view, the problem the economy solves is figuring out what consumers want and then giving it to them. The challenge here is how producers [...]
There is No Great Stagnation: Coffee Edition
Stephen Horwitz, The Freeman In a previous column I took on Tyler Cowen’s argument that the last few decades have been a period of “stagnation,” devoid of major wealth-enhancing innovations, by exploring how easy it was for me to order a part for my gas grill compared to a decade or two earlier, thanks to gains in technology and trade [...]
Markets Are Messy, Part 2: The Errors of the Economists
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Last week I argued that critics of markets are wrong when they point to imperfections as an ipso facto case for government intervention and when they criticize defenders of markets for being unable to explain exactly how they would solve a particular problem. Markets are inherently messy and [...]
Rhetoric, Reality, and the Recession
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz An enduring question about the lagging economic recovery is why so many Progressives continue to insist that more government is the solution, considering that we have now had three years of large-scale government responses under two different presidents. It’s easy to say that Progressives will [...]
The Expanding Sphere of Opportunities
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In earlier columns and other writing I have tried to emphasize that an excessive focus on economic aggregates can distort our understanding of how markets work and the effects of government policies. One area in which aggregates can be particularly problematic is the capital structure of an [...]
The Tax-the-Rich Truth Squad
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz President Obama has unveiled his so-called deficit reduction plan. Besides spending cuts that aren’t really cuts, he has proposed ending the Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making $200,000 (couples $250,000) or more and an additional surtax on those earning a million or more. The [...]
Natural Disasters and Disastrous Economics
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz With both an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week, it’s not just natural disaster season, it’s also economics disaster season. Both natural disasters have led to an awful lot of bad economics from various media commentators and even some supposed economic experts. The most common bit [...]
Giving Back
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Over the course of the recent debt-ceiling debate, one argument made in favor of raising taxes on the rich was that they ought to be “giving back.” It wasn’t always clear to whom they were supposed to be giving back, but the argument is that since “society” has made it possible for [...]
A Battle that Everyone Wins
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz The battle is on. No, it’s not Hayek-Keynes Round Three (as much as we might hope for that someday). It’s Facebook versus Google+, and folks are already taking sides. Rather than make a case for one over the other, which this early in the process would be silly anyway, I want to say a [...]
Markets and Human Excellence
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz One of the most wonderful feelings I experience is my aesthetic response to being in the presence of human excellence. A certain combination of glee and awe comes with watching people who are really good at what they do. For me this response is particularly associated with sports and [...]
Yes, It Is a Police State
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz As regular readers know, I’m not one for hyperbole, so perhaps some are thinking that my title is ironic. Nope, I mean it. An accumulation of events in recent months leads me to no other conclusion than that we are in fact living in a police state in the good old US of A. The list of [...]
Power and the Market
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz A running theme of these columns over the last 18 months has been how we libertarians communicate, particularly with the contemporary left. We often talk past each other because we work from different analytical frameworks; the questions and issues we think important do not always [...]
Guilt by Corporate Association
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz A favorite tactic of left-leaning critics of libertarians and other defenders of the free market is to smear them with a form of guilt by association: namely, by pointing out when advocates of deregulation have links, especially financial, to corporations which presumably would benefit [...]
It’s Only Gouging When They Do It
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz The recent spate of natural disasters, especially the tornadoes that hit the southern United States, has rekindled the seemingly eternal debate over the supposed problem of “price gouging.” Interestingly, for all the debate, no one has a clear definition beyond its having something to [...]
Free Markets Have Room for Everyone
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Many of the most pernicious anti-market fallacies relate to labor markets and employment. Perhaps the most damaging is what we might call the “fixed pie of jobs” fallacy. The crudest version of this argument is that immigrants coming to the United States “take our jobs.” The [...]
Not Everything Is a Market
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz It often seems that libertarians (especially ones who are well read in economics) think every social phenomenon under the sun can be understood in the same sorts of terms used to analyze markets. For example, we talk about our families, our workplaces, and even our interpersonal [...]
Staying Out of the Corner
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In economics, one of our favorite concepts is tradeoff. In a world of pervasive scarcity, every choice has a cost. Recognizing this fact about the human condition should lead us to see the world in terms of marginal benefits and costs. As we think about how to allocate our time and [...]
The TSA Makes Us Safer?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz and Art Carden We both have contributed to the debate about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) since the furor erupted over the new “enhanced pat-downs” and backscatter scanners, which some call “porno scanners.” This debate has shown how few are the real defenders of [...]
Markets and the Gender Wage Gap
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz The recently released White House report on Women in America (pdf) covers a great deal of interesting statistical data on the status of women in the United States. It also includes data indicating that in 2009 women on average earned about 75 cents for every dollar men earned. Some critics [...]
Judicial Activism and Parental Rights
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz As the Supreme Court ponders an important case on the constitutional status of parental rights, Alford v. Greene, it’s worth reflecting on how such rights play into the debate over “judicial activism.” Many have observed that “activist judges” are the ones whose verdicts you [...]
Government Can’t Regulate Just One Side of the Market
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz I’ve spent the last week or so teaching price controls in my intro-to-economics class. One thing I tried to stress is that controls are often sold to the citizenry in a way that disguises what they really do. I don’t mean just the obvious point that there are unintended consequences. I [...]
A Libertarian Antipoverty Agenda
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz About a month ago I published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer arguing that poor Americans today are better off than poor Americans were back in the early 1970s (and certainly before that). Not surprisingly, it has generated quite a stream of “fan mail” from those who either cannot [...]
Social Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In the last few decades scholars in the social sciences and humanities have commonly denied that social institutions are timeless essences reflecting objective human nature. Instead, these scholars argue that institutions are “socially constructed,” by which they mean that we human [...]
Diversity, Ends, and Rules
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In a previous column, I wrote about how the market promotes diversity by allowing us to use our different comparative advantages to benefit ourselves. I also noted how trade promotes the ends of those who are concerned about diversity by facilitating our contact with a wider array of [...]
A Feature, Not a Bug
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In a recent appearance on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch (Fox Business), Ralph Nader talked optimistically about a possible alliance between libertarians and Progressives. The groups, he pointed out, oppose many of the same things, from the new TSA procedures, to the wars in Iraq [...]
New Year’s Resolutions for Politicians
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz This week’s “The Calling” is coauthored with Jennifer Dirmeyer, assistant professor of economics at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. One of the most popular customs at the beginning of each new year is to reflect on the people we are and make resolutions we hope will turn us into [...]
War Would End the Recession?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In his September 28 New York Times blog post, Paul Krugman announced that “economics is not a morality play.” That turn of phrase is his way of defending the idea that in unusual times, such as the sort of deep recession we are in, we can get strange relationships between economic cause [...]
What “Undercover Boss” Could Be
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Recently I stumbled across the TV show Undercover Boss. A CEO poses as a new employee at one of his firm’s factories or stores in order to see how the company really runs. In the episode I watched, the CEO of the Johnny Rocket’s restaurant chain spent time working in a couple of [...]
Consumerism Is Keynesianism
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz One of the most pernicious and widespread economic fallacies is the belief that consumption is the key to a healthy economy. We hear this idea all the time in the popular press and casual conversation, particularly during economic downturns. People say things like, “Well, if folks would [...]
To the Opponents of Fractional Reserve Banking
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In some free-market circles fractional reserve banking (FRB) is blamed for everything from business cycles to bad breath. Defenders are seen as apologists for inflation and fraud. Thankfully these views remain a minority because they are gravely mistaken. As I, and other Austrian [...]
Plenty to Be Thankful For
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. I love football. I love to eat, and family means a great deal to me. I also like it because I think it’s important to step back from time to time and take stock of how things are going in our lives — to note, as I have argued [...]
Where the Bourgeois Virtues Are Found
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has just published the second volume of her multivolume look at the history of capitalism and its relationship to the “bourgeois virtues.” What she means by the latter are the basic virtues of the middle class, from prudence to love to justice. What [...]
Gridlock and Regime Uncertainty
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz For those of us who want to see the role of the State reduced in the bedroom, the boardroom, and the war room, election day always brings mixed feelings. However, the one outcome that sometimes cheers us up happened this week: one party in control of the presidency and the other in control [...]
The Irrelevance of Private-Sector Experience
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In a recent interview Carl Paladino, the highly entertaining but otherwise scary Republican candidate for governor of New York, was asked about his plans to make state government more efficient. Having lived in New York for over 20 years, I can certainly attest to the inefficiencies of the [...]
Of Football Helmets and Bailouts
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz One of the great things about economics is that so many ideas that are central to our discipline are easily seen in both the most mundane and most exotic of places. Today’s illustration of economic principles comes to us from the National Football League. One of this week’s lead stories [...]
Don’t Personalize the Political
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz A rhetorical trap that many people, including libertarians, fall into is blaming individuals for problems that are ultimately attributable to the political-economic structure. You see this when people (though usually not libertarians) say that things will be much better if we “clean house” [...]
Have Pro-Deregulation Economists Been Bought?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, Charles Ferguson offers up the latest version of the argument that the financial crisis was caused (at least in part or perhaps significantly) by deregulation — and claims that deregulation was pushed by economists who were on the consulting [...]
The Newspeak of Paul Krugman
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In his September 28 New York Times blog post, Paul Krugman announced that “economics is not a morality play.” That turn of phrase is his way of defending the idea that in unusual times, such as the sort of deep recession we are in, we can get strange relationships between economic [...]
Can A Nation Be Built?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz In the wake of both the collapse of the Soviet empire and the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have seen a lively debate on the topic of nation-building. In particular, many people who are ordinarily skeptical about the benevolent power of the U.S. government at home have come [...]
The Complexity of Simple Economics
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Last weekend I was fortunate enough to attend a ceremony honoring the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics, and my former professor, James Buchanan for his lifetime contributions to our understanding of the spontaneous order of the market and politics. The award was given by the Fund for the [...]
Mr. Keynes’s Aggregates: Concealing the Mechanisms of Change
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz One of F. A. Hayek’s most accurate, and oft-repeated, lines about John Maynard Keynes comes from a review of Keynes’s 1930 book, A Treatise on Money. Hayek wrote: “Mr. Keynes’ aggregates conceal the most fundamental mechanisms of change.” That Austrian macroeconomics rests firmly [...]
Why Do Futurists Get So Much Wrong?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz 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 Importance of History
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Back in the classroom after a year-long sabbatical, I’m realizing how much I missed the direct interaction with students. For me, nothing compares to those moments when the light of understanding comes on in my students or when they face a challenge to things long taken for granted. Their [...]
Saving Jobs Means Saving Us From Prosperity
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz One of the most pernicious fallacies in popular economic discussions is that we should adopt policies designed to save jobs. What was once just language used by those with a special interest in particular jobs (such as unions calling for import quotas as foreign cars became more popular) is now [...]
Why Optimism Seems so Irrational — Steven Horwitz
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Over the last several weeks my columns have made a variety of arguments about why the world is a much better place than it used to be and why we should be optimistic about the future. In last week’s column I mentioned Matt Ridley’s new book, The Rational Optimist, which I heartily [...]
Greece: The Canary In the U.S. Coal Mine? — Steven Horwitz
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman,Steven Horwitz With everything that was going on in the U.S. economy this past winter, the beginnings of the crisis facing the Greek economy were certainly easy to miss. As that crisis has now come to full flower, American observers overlook it at their peril: Greece’s problems, and those of other European [...]
Seeing the Big Picture Is Child’s Play — Steven Horwitz
When I was younger I thought airplanes were the coolest thing ever. In that way only kids (especially boys) can, I learned everything about the major commercial jets in the early 80s and was particularly fascinated by airline schedules and the hub-and-spoke system developing around that time. Most of that fascination was vicarious, since I [...]
