Freeman Essay #141: “Imagine That”
TweetIn the June 2012 Freeman I wrote – inspired by the late Julian Simon – on human imagination and creativity. My column is below the fold. Only human beings have imagination—or so I imagine. Dogs...
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TweetSheldon Richman laments the deficit in too many people’s understanding of trade. A slice: Let’s approach this from another direction. Whenever I buy from them [tobacconists and other merchants],...
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TweetGeorge Will rightly concurs with Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion on the constitutional illegitimacy of vaguely delegated powers. A slice: Gorsuch represents the growing ascendancy of...
View ArticleTechnology Will Not Impoverish Us By Doing More For Us
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: In his April 24th review of Ian Bremmer’s Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism, Howard French swallows Mr. Bremmer’s argument that automation will...
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TweetHere’s an e-mail that I just sent to a Cafe Hayek reader, Rhonda Foley, who has long worried about the effects on human employment and wages of artificial intelligence: Ms. Foley: Thanks for...
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Tweet“A car tariff would hurt consumers, the auto industry, and the nation” – so argues my Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold. A slice: And who benefits most from the competition from motor vehicle...
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TweetArt Carden offers sound advice on how to respond to Trump’s ignorant pronouncements on trade. A slice: The cruel irony is that all of the benefits of the tariffs to domestic producers can be...
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Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from Pres. Ronald Reagan’s January 25, 1988, State of the Union address: Where others fear trade and economic growth, we see opportunities for creating new wealth and undreamed-of...
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TweetJim Dorn rightly warns that the national-security card is too easily played to obstruct trade in order to enable special-interest groups to seize unearned riches. My GMU Econ and Mercatus Center...
View ArticleMore on the Long-Run
TweetTwo or three days ago on the radio – I think NPR, but I don’t recall with certainty – I heard a report on climate-change research. This report was prompted by William Nordhaus being named...
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Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 86 of Tyler Cowen’s 2018 volume, Stubborn Attachments: Market economies and market reforms look better as more weight is placed on the relatively distant future. A free society is...
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Bonus Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 181 of the 2016 Mercatus Center re-issue of my late colleague Don Lavoie’s superb and still-relevant 1985 volume National Economic Planning: What Is Left?: Frequent references in...
View ArticleStated Intentions Are Not Actual Results
TweetHere’s another letter to my daily correspondent Mr. Nolan McKinney: Mr. McKinney: You write: “Since China’s communist regime is working to grab the industries of tomorrow, it is economical suicide...
View ArticleGlobalization is a Boon
TweetToday it’s de rigueur (oops! pardon me for using an imported word)…. Today it’s acceptable and commonplace to assert that globalization, on many different margins, has failed, is failing, and will...
View ArticleMore Globalization (Please!)
TweetWhen I posted the first of three videos in Mercatus’s new Globalization series I carelessly missed the happy fact that videos numbers two and three are also already available. Here they are. (In...
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TweetDavid Harsanyi dissects the frightening, dogmatic mythology that motivates the likes of St. Greta of Stockholm. A slice: It’s the fault of ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it...
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TweetPrompted by the Trump administration’s threat to block Chinese economic investment in the United States, Scott Sumner is understandably critical of the ignorance coiled at the root of Trumpians’...
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Quotation of the Day…
Tweet… is from page 399 of George Will’s excellent 2019 book, The Conservative Sensibility: Actually, one reason to read history is to know how little has generally been known about what was coming...
View ArticlePittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Crystal-ball truths”
TweetIn my Pittsburgh Tribune-Review column for May 12th, 2006, I make some predictions, which you can read beneath the fold. Crystal-ball truths Economists often are asked to predict — predict...
View ArticleThe Hubris of Such People Is Appalling
TweetHere’s a letter to the Washington Post: Editor: Jonathan Gruber’s and Simon Johnson’s case for government to do massively more to increase innovation rests on several questionable assumptions (“We...
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