Some Links
TweetBrittany Hunter defends competition, market-driven innovation, and creative destruction against cronyism. Adam Smith: feminist. Mark Perry quotes Adam Smith on the virtues of free trade. Also from...
View ArticleA Letter to an Imagined Concerned Worker
TweetDear Concerned Worker: Those of us who support free trade are often accused of being callous and out-of-touch – even eggheaded – when we explain the benefits of free trade. These benefits include...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from Deirdre McCloskey’s article – “The Myth of Technological Unemployment” – in the August/September 2017 issue of Reason: Otherwise sensible folk are, for some reason, terrified by robots....
View ArticleSome Links
TweetHere’s Matt Ridley’s 2017 Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture, titled “The Case for Free-Market Anticapitalism.” A slice: My title is free-market anticapitalism. I want to argue that the champions of...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetDavid Henderson is correctly unconcerned that robots will cause sustained unemployment among humans. A slice: MIT labor economist David Autor estimated that an average U.S. worker in 2015 could...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetMarian Tupy, who grew up under communism, is not amused by nostalgia for communism – and especially not by the not-from-The-Onion (but from the New York Times) assertion that communism enhanced...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetGeorge Will reveals protectionists’ – Jon Murphy would say “scarcityists'” – noxious combination of ignorance and guile. A slice: Exactly 200 years ago, [David] Ricardo published “On the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 81 of the original 1985 Cambridge University Press edition of Jim Buchanan’s and Geoff Brennan’s excellent book, The Reason of Rules: Constitutional commitments or constraints...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 18 of the 2000 Liberty Fund edition of Geoff Brennan’s and Jim Buchanan’s 1985 book, The Reason of Rules: At any point, one can contemplate the prevailing market order and recognize...
View ArticleWhat If the World were Doomed?
TweetSuppose that every human being were today to learn, and to accept this knowledge beyond any doubt, that the world will end in one year, on October 2nd, 2018. What would ‘ideal’ government policy...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetMark Koyama reviews Peter Leeson’s WTF: An Economic History of the Weird. George Will reviews some of the different perspectives on the effects of cuts in tax rates. Speaking of the economics of...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetMark Perry highlights one good reason why we Americans should be thankful this coming Thursday. Here’s the video that opened this past Wednesday’s annual Mercatus Center dinner. (Jeff Holmes, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 30 of Tomas Larsson’s 2001 book, The Race to the Top: As Disraeli noted, “Protectionism is not a principle but an expedient.” DBx: There are those who, out of sheer economic...
View ArticleFreeman Essay #20: “Julian Simon, Lifesaver”
TweetMy memory remains vivid of Sheldon Richman calling me in February 1998 to inform me that Julian Simon unexpectedly died. What devastating news that was then – and remains today. Julian Simon was...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetMatt Ridley calms baseless fears about the effects of innovation on jobs. Here’s his conclusion: Here too history teaches a reassuring lesson. Automation has already shifted vast amounts of...
View ArticleFear of the Future Helps to Fuel Protectionism and Many Other Government...
TweetIn my latest column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I blame fear of the future for policies that make the future more fearful. A slice: Nearly every popular economic fallacy reflects fear of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bonus Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 421 of Deirdre McCloskey’s stupendous 2010 volume, Bourgeois Dignity: If local envy and protection and interest and keeping the peace between users of old and new technologies are...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetAmity Shlaes makes the case for growth rather than for so-called ‘equality.‘ Here’s the conclusion to George Will’s current column: Americans consider deferral of gratification unnatural, which it...
View ArticleSome Links
TweetGeorge Will rightly objects – and hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court will also – to state-imposed restrictions on what voters can wear to the polls. Gary Galles is right that Herbert Spencer was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 240 of Martin Wolf’s great 2004 book, Why Globalization Works: As old opportunities migrate, new ones emerge. DBx: Sincere protectionists – those who oppose free trade, not because...
View Article