The Four Pillars of Economic Understanding
– January 24, 2020 Reading Time: 8 minutes
It is no exaggeration to say that learning economics changed my life. In fact, I would go as far as saying the two most pivotal moments of my young adulthood was meeting my future wife at 17 and being exposed to economics at 19. Not only pivotal, but responsible for the good fortune and happiness I have had in the intervening years.
Earlier this month I turned 60. I became an economics major ...
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Thomas Sowell: From Marxism To The Free-Market
Government programs that are supposed to help minorities end up doing more harm than good.
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Collectivism Breeds Indifference to the Loss of Liberty
Who does not want to make the world a better place? With so much sorrow and suffering, poverty and plunder, cynicism and corruption in far too many places, nearly everyone, if asked, will usually say that if he could he would try to make this shared planet of ours a safer, prettier, more prosperous, and less unjust shared domicile on which we all live. The problem is, what are the best means to that end?
The answer to that question has plagued ...
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How Cars Got Safer: Free Market Lessons from Automotive Crash Test Ratings
In a famous interview from the 1970s, the inimitable TV host Phil Donahue asked Milton Friedman, “Tell us how we are going to get automotive companies to sell us safety with the same vigor that they sell us cosmetic features?”
Two generations later, the traffic fatality rate had fallen by over 80 percent. So, what changed?
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Wanted: Missionaries, Not Monks | Lawrence W. Reed
If you’ve watched FEE programs, publications, and announcements even occasionally in the last couple of years, you’ve no doubt noticed some important changes. We’ve retooled and refocused. At the same time, we’ve reaffirmed the principles of our founding some 67 years ago. We’re using technology more (the Web, social media, videos, webinars, etc.) because that’s where our prime audience of high school and college students is. ...
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Many Pathways to Policy Failure
“Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles,” wrote Ludwig von Mises. “It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence.”
He wrote that in 1949, a time when the world was coming out of the darkest days of the 20th century and seeking a new way. The way forward involved ...
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Thomas Sowell | Official Event Screener
EVENT SCREENERRuntime: 10 minutes and 14 seconds ABOUT THE FILM"Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World" traces Sowell’s journey from humble beginnings to the Hoover Institution, becoming one of our era’s greatest economists, political philosophers, and prolific authors. Hosted by Jason Riley, a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board, the one-hour program features insights from Sowell and interviews with his ...
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Socialists Claim Their System Is Morally Superior. They're Wrong.
In a December 23 article published on mises.org, Lipton Matthews made the compelling case for advocates of free market capitalism to prioritize the moral superiority of capitalism rather than making the case for capitalism’s superior productivity.
“Demonstrating the impracticality of socialism is necessary, but is also an ineffective strategy to galvanize goodwill for capitalism, because objections to capitalism are usually predicated ...
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Why It's Important to Make the Moral Case for Capitalism | Lipton Matthews
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.
It is true that free market capitalism is the best system for promoting human flourishing and prosperity. Not surprisingly, then, many advocates for free markets exalt the dynamism of capitalism. However, in making this utilitarian defense of capitalism, defenders might also be ceding the moral position to socialists.
The Importance of the Moral Argument
Demonstrating the ...
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The Great Enrichment - Discourse
The Great Recession of 2008, and now the Greater Recession, might distract you from the vastly bigger story of our times: the Great Enrichment, from 1800 to the present. But as we try to restart the economy battered by governmental failures, we need to keep in mind, and keep, what has been gained.
As more than one historian has pointed out, poor people in the United States and other developed countries live better than 18th-century European ...
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The GOOD News of 2020
2020 was "the worst year ever!” said many.But was it? NO!... says historian Johan Norberg. He reminds me to be grateful for the GOOD trends in the world. ----Don't miss the weekly video from Stossel TV. Sign up here: https://johnstossel.activehosted.com/f/1 ----"If I were to pick a year, the best year in human history to face a pandemic, I would say it's 2020," Norberg says."Which OTHER year would you pick?" he ...
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On Living In Harmony With Nature
– January 4, 2021 Reading Time: 5 minutes
As pointed out by many, including the late Robert Nelson, many people over these past few decades have embraced environmentalism as their religion. One of the familiar tropes of the resulting dogma is that our pre-industrial ancestors “lived in harmony with nature” while we moderns live in conflict with it. This alleged conflict, we are warned, is destroying nature and, in turn, will destroy ...
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“I, Pencil” Can Help You Downsize Your Inner Central Planner
FEE President Lawrence Reed has called “I, Pencil,” “Paradigm-shifting.” Reed writes, “Many first-time readers never see the world quite the same again.” The wisdom in “I, Pencil” can also shift how you view your personal life.
In “I, Pencil” Leonard Read instructs, “Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society’s legal apparatus remove all obstacles the ...
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Why It's Important to Make the Moral Case for Capitalism
Yes, capitalism is more efficient than socialism, but to build a compelling argument for free market capitalism, defenders of liberty must also articulate that it is a superior moral system.
Original Article: "Why It's Important to Make the Moral Case for Capitalism".
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.
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Twelve Principles of International Trade: Part 3
In 1883, the American economist and sociologist William Graham Sumner described protectionism as deserving “only contempt and scorn, satire and ridicule. It is such an arrant piece of economic quackery, and it masquerades under such an affectation of learning and philosophy, that it ought to be treated as other quackeries are treated.”
His description was correct then and it remains correct now. The notion that people will be enriched if ...
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Barstool Sports is Helping Struggling Small Businesses Far More Efficiently than the Government
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has been vocally opposed to COVID-19 lockdowns. But beyond criticism alone, Portnoy is rising to the occasion and using his reach to provide real assistance for small business owners.
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Private Charity versus the Political Grinches
Christmas is a time of good cheer, gift-giving, and hopes for the New Year. This year, 2020, has been a hard and disturbing one for virtually all of us due to the coronavirus and, especially, the government’s heavy-handed shutdown and lockdown responses. What Christmas time also represents is a time of benevolence and generosity to family, friends, and others who may be in less fortunate circumstances than ourselves.
According to the ...
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Quotation of the Day…
(Don Boudreaux)
Tweet… is from page 174 of Bas Van Der Vossen’s and Jason Brennan’s excellent 2018 book, In Defense of Openness:
When free people choose to interact in mutually advantageous ways, justice demands that we leave them be.
DBx: Van Der Vossen and Brennan had in mind when they wrote these words – which appear in the Postscript of their book – mostly trade and immigration. They obviously were not writing in response to the ...
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Heroes in a Year of Horrors
Art Carden rightly points out that 2020 doesn’t come close to being humanity’s worst year ever. This reality ought never be forgotten. Still, 2020 has nevertheless proven, by modern standards, to be a year especially vile. And by far the vilest aspects of this soon-to-be-done year are the media-fueled unhinged fear of Covid-19 and the resulting tolerance for arbitrary restrictions on human freedom.
Yet bad times bring to the fore heroic ...
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Why It's Important to Make the Moral Case for Capitalism
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.
It is true that free market capitalism is the best system for promoting human flourishing and prosperity. Not surprisingly, then, many advocates for free markets exalt the dynamism of capitalism. However, in making this utilitarian defense of capitalism, defenders might also be ceding the moral position to socialists.
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The Importance of the Moral ...
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FAVORITES
Is life today bad? Or is it awesome? “Economics Made the World Great” shows changes that have taken place in the past three centuries that have made the world better. Can it be better still?
Jon Favreau’s heartwarming 2014 independent film, “Chef”, is a case study in entrepreneurial value creation. Even better, it shows us how we can achieve economic success and personal fulfillment simultaneously, provided that we figure out how to take our passions and turn them towards making other people’s lives better.
Magatte Wade was born in Senegal but spent much of her childhood in France. Growing up, she saw the extreme differences in wealth between Africa and Europe. This disparity sparked a question… Why are some countries rich, and others poor?
How do we summarize the 2010s? Many think it was an awful decade, ten years of horror, unfair distribution and environmental disaster.
It’s a Wonderful Loaf is an ode to the hidden harmony that is all around us–the seeming magical ways that we anticipate and meet the needs of each other without anyone being in charge.