Topic: Free Markets

empty shelves

Mandatory Shortages And Concentrated Pain: What “Price Gouging” Laws Do

– September 6, 2020

“Disasters and emergencies are bad enough without policies that make things worse. That’s exactly what price gouging laws are: rules that actually make these worse for the least of these among us by snuffing out the signals that would tell the rest of us precisely what is needed where.” ~ Art Carden

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space x dragon

For-Profit Companies Must be the Backbone of the New Space Age

– September 5, 2020

“Space remains the final frontier. Just as with the terrestrial frontier, private enterprise should be the driving force for exploration, development, and settlement.” ~ David R. Henderson & Alexander W. Salter

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golden gate bridge

The Myth of the Crowding-Out Myth

– September 4, 2020

“Recognizing that private investment usually works better than public investment does not mean that public investment is never desirable. But it does put the burden of proof on those who champion public investment projects. Rather than offering faux refutations of the crowding-out argument and citing anecdotal evidence, as Skidelsky does, those in favor of a public investment project should make the case for why it is desirable.” ~ William J. Luther & Nicolás Cachanosky

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restaurant, closed

The Best Virus Response Is Less Government, Not More

– September 3, 2020

“Please ask yourself in your relative comfort just how deep your corona-religion is? Is it so deep that you’ll continue to turn a blind eye to the global suffering that’s taking place so that you can feel safe from a virus that thankfully kills so few? The lives of hundreds of millions of innocent people with exponentially less than you hang on your level of alarmism, and the strange joy you derive from being told what to do.” ~ John Tamny

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public school

Reform the K-12 Government- School Monopoly: Economics and Facts

– September 2, 2020

“The economics and facts support the logic of freeing parents to obtain private education and alternative public education for their children. To further facilitate this decision, parents should be given vouchers and credits equal to the cost of public school in their area, which they can freely use to fund their choice of better education in the private sector.” ~ Gregory van Kipnis

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Vegan Butter and the History of Regulatory Capture

– September 2, 2020

“At any point in time, say at present, the cost of this instrumentalization of regulatory agencies for private purposes appears minimal. After all, only an infinitesimal fraction of the economy is affected. Yet, try picturing a counterfactual America where the regulatory waltz that began in the late 19th century never actually started. How much richer would Americans be today?” ~ Vincent Geloso

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Profit and Loss and Mr. Biden

– September 2, 2020

“Sound bites may be good for political harangues but they are never enough for true understanding. Dissing profits is misleading if no distinction is made between consumer-driven competitive profits and crony-capitalist ones, or if losses are overlooked.” ~ Warren C. Gibson

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plato statue

Plato v. Mises: Mises Wins

– September 1, 2020

“The Noble Lie is not noble; if we all repeat it and we are taught it in state schools, before long it’s not even a lie. Because worshippers of the state actually persuade themselves that the whole thing is true. Yes, we are all born equal, but some of us are more equal than others. People want power so they can do good in the world; the result is that they sacrifice their intellect for the sake of their daydreams.” ~ Michael Munger

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Material Benefits Are Not Merely Material

– September 1, 2020

“Had this material wealth been produced in less abundance, the range of higher goals that ordinary Americans would today be able to pursue would be narrower. And this material wealth would indeed have been produced in less abundance had Americans been saddled with more of the tariffs, subsidies, and other government interventions for which Oren Cass tirelessly pleads.” ~ Donald J. Boudreaux

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trump, paternalism

Trump’s “American Greatness” Also Political Paternalism

– August 31, 2020

“Regardless of each citizen’s decision on how they may or may not vote in the coming November election, the real battle for the future of America is in this longer-term conflict of ideas, and the courage and willingness to not be despondent but, instead, shoulder some part of the effort to make that liberal Utopia an ideal wanted by a growing number of our fellow Americans.” ~ Richard M. Ebeling

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running businessman

Entrepreneurship May Die Too

– August 31, 2020

“America’s saving grace may be that most of the rest of the world, even Anglosphere countries like Australia and New Zealand, screwed up even worse. But the biggest threat was never a mass exodus of entrepreneurs, it was the loss of entrepreneurship itself.” ~ Robert E. Wright

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The Danger of Our Left-Right Political Divide

– August 30, 2020

“A free and open society requires the round rejection of both left and right flavors of failed twentieth-century authoritarianism, the restoration of the classical liberal ideas that transformed the world and yet were never given their due.” ~ David S. D’Amato

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