Topic: Capitalism

Dynamic Pricing Puts the “Fast” Back in Fast Food

– March 19, 2024

“By offering lower prices in off-peak hours, Wendy’s would be able to attract more customers overall, thus charging lower prices on average, even if prices during peak periods were higher than what they charge now.” Thomas Savidge and Louis Rouanet

READ MORE

Proletarian Capitalism

– March 8, 2024

“Simply by repurposing existing personal property, Uber, Airbnb, and other sharing-economy innovations enlarge humanity’s stock of productive capital. And in doing so, these innovations also create more capitalists.” ~Donald J. Boudreaux

READ MORE

Unseen Innovation

– February 1, 2024

“An individual innovation is small, minuscule even. But it’s real and it improves our standard of living. Yet how many of you have noticed it? Almost none. The market, therefore, gets no credit for it.” ~Donald J. Boudreaux

READ MORE

The Beginning of the Modern World: It Was Always the Dutch

– January 14, 2024

“The Dutch Republic was a common destination for a brain-drain of innovators from elsewhere: merchants from the south, bakers from Germany, Portuguese and Spanish Jews.” ~Joakim Book

READ MORE

Capitalism Is Impersonal, Not Soulless

– January 4, 2024

“Because in today’s global economy the people with whom we interact economically number literally in the billions, the percentage of these persons with whom we also interact personally is near zero.” ~Donald J. Boudreaux

READ MORE

This Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: Maybe You Don’t Need a Can Opener

– December 26, 2023

“Pull tabs and plastic bottles are among the innumerable wonders free people exercising free minds in free markets bring to us every day in exchange for progressively fewer fruits of our labors.” ~Art Carden

READ MORE

Johan Norberg’s The Capitalist Manifesto: A Review

– November 24, 2023

“What matters for the capitalist story to flourish is that its effect on the world continues to be positive, not whether market actors believe it while embodying its principles.” ~Joakim Book

READ MORE

Why Adam Smith Would Have Been a Baseball Fan 

– November 12, 2023

“A player who fails with the bat two out of three times becomes a superstar. Likewise, a market economy also creates the possibility of failure.” ~Paul McDonnold

READ MORE

Is There a Problem? vs. Is this Competitive? 

– October 30, 2023

“Amazon’s offering lower prices compared to online rivals undercuts the FTC’s assertion that it is a proof of its monopolistic abuse, yet it is completely consistent with Amazon’s pro-consumer explanation.” ~Gary M. Galles

READ MORE

The FTC’s Amazonian Snipe Hunt

– October 21, 2023

“The FTC argues that Amazon’s market power inhibits the ability of competitors to enter the retail superstore marketplace. Such concerns are likely overblown.” ~David Gillette and Warren Barge

READ MORE

Bookstore Protectionism

– October 16, 2023

“Both past and present suits claimed that the problem was dominant sellers unfairly harming independents, which thereby undermined competition. But in that, they misrepresented both what competition means and who was harming less-successful competitors.” ~Gary M. Galles

READ MORE

You’re No Einstein, Einstein  

– October 2, 2023

“While he does seem to have intuited that socialism increased the dangers of authoritarian government, he doesn’t seem to have fully grasped that what he sought were two goals in fundamental tension.” ~James A. Hanley

READ MORE