Topic: Free Markets

The Case for the Deregulated Texas Power Grid

– March 3, 2021

“Markets learn from outlier events such as this one. Institutions and individuals will adapt in light of new perceptions of weather exigencies and risks. This is the major advantage of any deregulation market: it is adaptive. The same cannot be said for any system of regulated state control.” ~ Jack Nicastro

Economic Education, Energy, Free Markets

Texas Electricity Prices Are Lower Due to Deregulation

– March 2, 2021

“Contrary to McGinty and Patterson, a close look at the evidence reveals that deregulation and competition have, in fact, reduced electricity prices in Texas. Prices in competitive markets have fallen, while those of noncompetitive utilities have increased. Competition has brought both residential and commercial prices down below the national averages.” ~ Thomas L. Hogan

Economic Education, Free Markets

That The Profit Of One Man Is The Gain Of Another

– March 2, 2021

“It is not exploitation; rather, profit is a reward you earn for helping strangers in ways that waste no resources and leave them available for other strangers. Are firms earning ‘exorbitant’ profit selling natural gas and Covid vaccines? I doubt it. If anything, people scrambling to get their hands on artificially-short supplies indicates that they aren’t making enough.” ~ Art Carden

Economic Education, Free Markets, Policy

The Sin Tax Paradox

– March 1, 2021

“It is time to jettison the notion of taxing sin and think hard again about the LBT advocated by Milton Friedman and Henry George, a tax on the unimproved value of land. It’s a tax, and hence bad, but it’s less distortionary than taxing income or sin and it doesn’t have to be high if government would only stick to its core functions.” ~ Robert E. Wright

Free Markets, Government

We Can Still Have a Century of Liberty

– February 28, 2021

“Maybe I’m just the victim of an elaborate after-the-fact selection issue: maybe I just remember the precursors to what actually happened, and conveniently forgot the signs that indicated an outcome that didn’t come to pass. Most people who call flourishing futures for the ideas whose times have come are wrong. Still, from where I’m standing, the corona madness and infantilizing political landscape aside, it does look like the twenty-first century might be the century of true freedom.” ~ Joakim Book

Classical Liberalism, Economic Education, Free Markets

Looking For Common Sense In A Senseless World? The New Thomas Sowell Documentary Delivers

– February 27, 2021

“Rethinking and questioning our assumptions has long been en vogue in the academy, and if you really listen to what he has to say, few scholars will make you rethink your assumptions like Sowell will. If you’re looking for a one-hour introduction to one of the great minds of the last century, Common Sense in a Senseless World is exactly that.” ~ Art Carden

Authoritarianism, Free Markets, Government

Insight From My Mom On Freedom

– February 21, 2021

“History, and especially my family history, has shown us what happens when we lower our guard in favor of the tempting utopianism of big government. Liberty is always unfinished business and the cost is eternal vigilance, both public and private.” ~ Ethan Yang

Free Markets, Government, Policy

Market Governance and Polycentrism

– February 19, 2021

“Not only do polycentric systems of governance produce superior results for society over centralized systems, but such productive mechanisms and their benefits can be observed as institutions reflected by the market. These institutions disperse decision-making rights, provide checks on power, and create systems of order by driving cooperation from a diverse array of actors.” ~ Ethan Yang & Jack Nicastro

Economic Education, Free Markets

Do We Really Need All These Barbecue Restaurants?

– February 16, 2021

“Markets provide people with what they actually want as tested against their willingness to pay rather than what the Bernie Sanderses of the world know to be best for us. This is a feature, not a bug.” ~ Art Carden

Free Markets, Government, Policy

The Bankruptcy of Conservative Political Paternalism

– February 15, 2021

“Oren Cass is really figuring out how to outwit the progressives in the game of political plunderhood by devising coalitions in society that will put ‘his side’ in elected office next time around through a ‘conservative’ version of handouts of favors, privileges and subsidies. His ‘new’ conservatism, therefore, is really only the same old political paternalism, just in different rhetorical clothing. We need neither ‘progressives’ nor ‘conservatives’ of Cass’s ilk to manage the world.” ~ Richard M. Ebeling

Cryptocurrency, Currency, Free Markets

Tesla’s Bitcoin Purchase Is the Start of a Bullish Monetary Future

– February 10, 2021

“The bullish future that Tesla seems to be helping to usher in is one of private monies replacing government money, of individuals asking for compensation in money they trust over money that governments haven’t always overseen in trustworthy fashion. Elon Musk is helping to bring the future into the present. We’ll all be better off as a result.” ~ John Tamny

Crisis, Economic Education, Free Markets

Price-gouged and Happy About It

– February 9, 2021

“When the anti–price gouging law is in effect, being able to buy a necessity here is a matter of timing: being on store premises at or shortly after a shipment arrives. Then you can buy it, and not even at the market price, but at the pre-emergency price enforced by the government. Everyone else is out of luck.” ~ Jon Sanders