Topic: Economic Education

Three Burning Questions about Political Economy

– September 10, 2018

Can you explain why we Americans today, who are so much richer than were our great-great grandparents, are also so much more fearful than they were of peaceful immigrants?

Economic Education, Free Markets

An Education in One Evening, Courtesy of Jordan Peterson

– September 8, 2018

Politics promised to give us a meaningful life. It failed. Now we have to find it elsewhere. As the poet Virgil led Dante through Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, Jordan Peterson is the tour guide of the modern world in its confrontation with our inner selves.

Economic Education

Max Stirner’s Enduring Relevance

– September 7, 2018

Collectivism left horrifying stains on the 20th century. With the new technologies of supervision and control now available, the dominance of collectivist beliefs in the new century would be outright devastating. It is time to ban the curse of collectivism. We need an individualist turn in philosophy and politics and must abandon the mystical beliefs in false abstractions. To this end, Max Stirner is the indispensable guide.

Economic Education

It’s Not Only about Markets vs. the State

– September 4, 2018

“Voluntary collective action” should be our motto. This obviously includes markets, to be sure. But there is no reason to cede the vitality, attractiveness, and exuberance of the non-profit independent sector to ownership by the state. Voluntary private organizations belong to everyone.

Economic Education, Video

AIER Scholars on The Rubin Report

– August 31, 2018

The Rubin Report has been an important source for the dissemination of sound economic ideas.

Economic Education

Great News from AIER

– August 31, 2018

So many wonderful things are happening at the American Institute for Economic Research.

Economic Education

Your Guide to Understanding Real vs. Nominal GDP

– August 30, 2018

Why do economists believe that the level of GDP we observe is merely nominal and that something called real GDP, which one cannot observe directly, actually exists?

Economic Education, Socialism

Democratic Socialism Is Poetry, Not Economics

– August 27, 2018

It is not serious thought to go around simply demanding that everything be free. That demand solves no problem that has occupied the world of economics for a thousand years. Try to implement it and someone, everyone, is going to pay – long lines, impossible high taxes, hyperinflation, material deprivation – and not through choice.

Economic Education, Economic History

The Origin and Meaning of Profits

– August 23, 2018

There is no particular reason to expect that education or intellectual interests are an advantage in cultivating a habit of awareness of the sort Kirzner highlights. But there are very good reasons to argue that profits, deserved or not, are something that entrepreneurs should be legally entitled to seek.

Economic Education

The Great Danger of the Stakeholder Mandate

– August 20, 2018

While there are imperfections in today’s economy in general and its system of corporate governance in particular, these are nowhere as extensive and threatening as Sen. Warren thinks them to be. And these imperfections are certainly not so serious as to justify any militant and wholesale restructuring of corporate law of the sort that Sen. Warren — with her mix of extraordinary arrogance, ignorance, and recklessness — proposes.

Economic Education, Education

The LeBron James Strategy for Saving Schools

– August 12, 2018

James was given unprecedented freedom with I Promise School, even though taxpayers are footing about 75 percent of the bill.

Economic Education

A Theory of Conspiracy Theory

– August 3, 2018

When things don’t go our way, when institutions produce outcomes we find contrary to our conception of what should be, we seek out the culprit, the hidden hand making things as they are. Surely some powerful cabal manipulated the world to take the shape that it does. Nothing is random, spontaneous, truly decentralized, accidental, or the product of an emergent process that no one in particular controls. There is a power behind some curtain somewhere. The purpose of the conspiracy theory is to find it and bring it to justice.