"Profit and loss can be expressed in definite amounts of money. It is possible to ascertain in terms of money how much an individual has profited or lost. However, this is not a statement about this individual’s psychic profit or loss. It is a statement about a social...
Economics
Pseudo-Liberalism
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 29, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"The detractors of liberty are in this sense right in calling it a 'bourgeois' issue and in blaming the rights guaranteeing liberty for being negative. In the realm of state and government, liberty means restraint imposed upon the exercise of the police power. "There...
Freedom and Competition
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 28, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"The freedom of man under capitalism is an effect of competition. The worker does not depend on the good graces of an employer. If his employer discharges him, he finds another employer. The consumer is not at the mercy of the shopkeeper. He is free to patronize...
“Mature Capitalism” Ain’t Capitalism
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 27, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"It would be correct to describe this state of affairs in this way: Today many or some groups of business are no longer liberal; they do not advocate a pure market economy and free enterprise, but, on the contrary, are asking for various measures of government...
TGIF: Social Cooperation Versus Violence
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 27, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The chilling photo of a hooded man cold-bloodedly executing a health-insurance CEO on a busy New York City street should make any decent person pause and reflect. Anyone who even glimpses the role of social cooperation in making life better and longer felt sickened,...
Protecting Vested Interests
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 26, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"There were and there will always be people whose selfish ambitions demand protection for vested interests and who hope to derive advantage from measures restricting competition. Entrepreneurs grown old and tired and the decadent heirs of people who succeeded in the...
From Savagery to Civilization
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 25, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"The market economy is a man-made mode of acting under the division of labor. But this does not imply that it is something accidental or artificial and could be replaced by another mode. The market economy is the product of a long evolutionary process. It is the...
What Corporatism Actually Is
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 24, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"The fundamental idea both of guild socialism and of corporativism is that every branch of business forms a monopolistic body, the guild or corporazione. This entity enjoys full autonomy; it is free to settle all its internal affairs without interference of external...