A Real Agenda for a Renewal of Free Market Liberalism
If the classical liberals of that earlier time could defeat the prevailing beliefs and vested interests supporting human slavery, after its existence for all of human history, some of us believe the same can be done against the existing system of collectivism, interventionism, and welfare statism in both their authoritarian and democratic forms.
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Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and the $3,500 Suit
It should come as no surprise that in a political/economic system helmed by an elite that the trappings of a ruling class inevitably follow.
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Microfoundations in Macroeconomics
Paul Krugman is a little too quick to dismiss the need for microfoundations in rigorous macro models.
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Arthur Pigou Warned of the Failures of Government
“Pigou may have been too optimistic about the prospects for improving state action, but he had no illusions about the problem states faced in acting correctly.” ~ Michael Munger
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Currency Reform in Ancient Rome
The best conclusion that can be drawn from examining these instances is that in response to the familiar rhetorical query – “Are we going the way of the Romans?” – one can reply, truthfully: “No; they occasionally reformed their currency.”
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The Labeling Problem in Economic Thought
There is a core of the economic way of thinking that can be traced from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith and that deals with basic ideas about human rationality, human sociability, and the coordination of activity through time. Incentives, information, and innovation are part of this core as they derive from the even more primordial ideas of property, prices, and profit-and-loss accounting.
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A Brief on Alt-Right Ideology
Every activist political movement eventually becomes a caricature of itself. This is certainly true of the so-called alt-right that blasted onto the cultural stage with its “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
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The Counterrevolution
Fascism often is discussed as though it were the opposite of communism, but such is not precisely the case. Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were different in many respects; but the principles of their economic ideologies were the principles of socialism; their initial appeal was to the underprivileged; and the final result, a new despotism, was the same in all three instances.
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Some Confusions of Language in Economic Thought
Fifty years ago, in 1968, Austrian (and Austrian school) economist Friedrich A. Hayek published a monograph called The Confusion of Language in Political Thought. Hayek argued that the words we use and the meanings we give to them greatly influence how we think about the political system and the wider social order in which we live. This is no less so, I would suggest, in the language and the meanings of words used in economics.
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The Beautiful Philosophy of Liberalism
There has been a great paradox in the modern world. On the one hand, freedom and prosperity have replaced tyranny and poverty for tens, indeed for hundreds of millions of people around the world over the last two centuries. Yet the political and economic system that historically has made this possible has been criticized and condemned. That political and economic system is liberalism.
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How to Pay Tribute to a Great Mind
You think ideas don’t matter, that intellectuals aren’t really relevant to the shape of the modern world? Read some of these tributes and you will see otherwise. Mario Rizzo is for the ages.
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Using Dichotomy to Teach Monetary Theory II: Demystifying Demand for Money
The equation of exchange provides building blocks for understanding the dynamics of the market for money.
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