Topic: Economic History

We’re Still Making Diocletian’s Mistakes

– May 2, 2019

Diocletian may have greatly strengthened the Roman state, but that extra strength appears not to have dented poverty, inflation, or civil war. Today the instinct to increase state power to achieve desired outcomes is thriving on both sides of the aisle.

Economic History

The Bow Tie Built Wall Street

– April 28, 2019

The bow tie helped build the early years of Wall Street. Maybe it can assist in re-building the ethos of prosperity and success in the 21st century.

Economic History

What Authors Should Know About Copyright

– April 15, 2019

AIER’s publishing strategy is designed to broaden the choices available to authors, never using the force of law to deny creators their rights.

Economic History

Government Monopolies Institutionalize and Perpetuate Racial Discrimination

– April 11, 2019

Markets offer a powerful tool for fighting government-sanctioned racial discrimination.

Art and Culture, Economic History

Every House Needs a Nazar Amulet

– March 26, 2019

We need some protection from the evil eye that modern politics is working daily to unleash.

Economic History

If You Love Hot Chocolate, Thank This Man

– March 24, 2019

Behind every great innovation, there is an innovator or maybe many.

Economic History

Why Your Grandfather Never Complained about His Ailments but You Do

– March 19, 2019

Perennial illness is the default state of mankind. Markets have put human beings at the center of a dense web of affordable, effective choices to meet our needs and desires: those relating to our health are no exception.

Economic History

How the Word Liberalism Came to Mean Its Opposite

– February 13, 2019

The classical liberalism of the 19th century needs to be the reborn new liberalism of the 21st century, to once more offer an ideal of individual freedom, free enterprise, impartial rule of law, and equality before the law.

Economic History

The Anatomy of a Moral Panic

– February 12, 2019

The notion of a moral panic is a powerful one that explains much of what goes on in popular mass media, public discussion, and, all too often, actual policy. It is a valuable intellectual tool to use to protect yourself against unwarranted and dangerous anxiety and being taken advantage of by deluded or unscrupulous hucksters.

Economic History

Imagine a Clock that Doesn’t Surveil You

– February 2, 2019

It is like a living thing in your presence. It speaks with great profundity, the erudition achieved through wordless regularity.

Economic History, Philosophy

Soaking the Rich Doesn’t Lead to Income Equality

– January 23, 2019

Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman claim we need a 70% tax rate to stem inequality. Their argument derives from a misreading of U.S. tax history.

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.