What Will The Stimulus Stimulate?
“We shouldn’t be surprised that what ultimately emerged was a dog’s breakfast of giveaways for special interests. That’s the nature of the political beast. As we continue to cede power to enormous rent-creating operations called governments, we shouldn’t be surprised by the results.” ~ Art Carden
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Knowledge Problems With Discretionary Central Banking
“You need to make some truly heroic assumptions in order for discretionary monetary policy to outperform rule-bound policy. Rarely do any of those assumptions hold. Never do they all hold. If we want a well-functioning central bank, the best we can do is to have rules.” ~ Alexander W. Salter
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Ronald Coase: A Birthday Appreciation
“Like Adam Smith before him, Ronald Coase remains highly cited but still underrated. His ideas on transaction costs, rules, and organizations were influential, but as I wrote when he passed in 2013, ‘a few minutes with the ‘externalities’ section of almost any principles book, or a few seconds watching and listening to TV and radio discussions of environmental policy — suggests that it [“The Problem of Social Cost” specifically] is not influential enough.'” ~ Art Carden
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Twelve Principles of International Trade: Part 3
“The notion that people will be enriched if their government artificially impedes their access to goods and services is as detached from reality as is the belief that the future can be revealed through astrology.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux
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In Defense of the Tom Cruise Rant
“It’s sad that businesses must waste time, money and brain space on compliance, but businesses ultimately must be bloodless and ideology-blind in pursuit of profits. Thank goodness they must.” ~ John Tamny
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Drink Your Coffee, Be Considerate, and Fight Covid-19
“Lockdowns are a blunt policy instrument typical of government officials who can only pretend to know how individuals make choices and the tradeoffs they face. However, we can still be considerate of the choices people make and fight Covid-19.” ~ Byron Carson
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Your Trauma and Mine: A Retrospective on 2020
“The many layers of trauma we’ve all experienced this year are awesome to contemplate. But if you are reading this, you are like me, a survivor. We are wounded but in other ways stronger than before, more dedicated to truth, more committed to the ideals of freedom, less naive and ready to go forth in battle not to let civilization be dismantled. Rather we must defend it with everything we have to offer.” ~ Jeffrey Tucker
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Digital Currencies and US Dollar Dominance
“Is this the end for the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency? As Churchill might have said, ‘…This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’” ~ Colin Lloyd
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Hope and Freedom in Georgia
“In Georgia you see actual happiness: smiles on faces, quick steps, and light conversations about something other than the virus. The look and feel of the place, with bustling commercial districts and holiday joy everywhere, absolutely startled me. Just being around this scene for a few days lifted my own spirits immeasurably.” ~ Jeffrey Tucker
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The Year Populism Was Right and the Experts Weren’t
“Deep down 2020 has taught us that officials don’t have a clue, that they don’t control what they pretend to control, and that their measures aren’t targeted to or calibrated for stopping the spread of a virus.” ~ Joakim Book
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All I Want for Christmas Is Some Sanity
“Asking Santa for full rationality this Christmas would be to request too much, like Eartha Kitt does in ‘Santa Baby’ when she begs the jolly old elf for a sable, a platinum mine, checks, and a bunch of other luxuries. I would be thrilled with just some sanity in humanity’s stockings.” ~ Robert E. Wright
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Better Fetters
“Unlike the fetters that are imposed on us by government, those inherent in the voluntary arrangements of capitalism are bulwarks against the aggression of others, whose primary practitioner is government. In other words, effectively defined and enforced property rights create a capitalism that is more effectively fettered and far more productive for all of us than government-imposed fetters that restrict and violate them.” ~ Gary M. Galles
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