As a follow-up to my recent article about F. A. Hayek's classic article "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945), I thought it worth extending Hayek's exploration of this area of social theory. In 1968 the Nobel laureate-economist delivered a lecture in German known...
Central Planning
Searching for Economic Solutions in Game Theory
by Zack Sorenson | Feb 9, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
The left and right-wings of economic thought spend much of their energy trying to refute each other, but an integration of both perspectives might be worth considering. The right-wing of economic thought has conclusively demonstrated that the value creating ability of...
No More ‘Better Mousetraps’: How Financialization Discourages Technological Improvement
by Zack Sorenson | Jan 11, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Capitalism is a social technology that directs resources toward valuable uses, increasing the total wealth in society. As a social technology, it organizes people and resources into systems and processes. When capitalism directs resources toward processes that...
Why Is Everything Getting So Expensive?
by Richard Ebeling | Jan 3, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
The United States and most of the rest of the world are, once again, in the midst of an inflationary crisis. Prices in general are rising at annualized rates not experienced by, especially, the industrialized countries of North America and Europe for well over 40...
It’s Time to Retire ‘Classical Liberalism’
by Jeff Deist | Dec 6, 2022 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism
“Today the tenets of this nineteenth-century philosophy of liberalism are almost forgotten. In the United States “liberal” means today a set of ideas and political postulates that in every regard are the opposite of all that liberalism meant to the preceding...
11/11/22 David Stockman on the Economy and the Misplaced Fear of China
by Scott Horton | Nov 17, 2022 | The Scott Horton Show
Download Episode. Scott is joined by David Stockman to talk about the economic issues facing the world today. To start, Stockman explains where the American economy stands today. He argues that the crash of 2020 represents the next stage in a 50-year evolution of...
The War for Our Language
by Jeff Deist | Oct 5, 2022 | Featured Articles
"Language is the perfect instrument of empire."- Antonio de Nebrija, bishop of Ávila, 1492 The bishop was correct, in his time and ours. Spain proceeded to become the most powerful empire in the world over the following century, spreading her mother tongue across the...
Capitalism is Being Strangled
by Jim Cardoza | Sep 20, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
It was out of a revulsion for tyranny and a hunger for liberty that Americans were inspired to revolution. We don’t like being told what to do. We went to war to secure the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.In our founding document, liberty was...
Trade Restrictions Are Depriving Our Infants of Formula
by Ryan McMaken | May 16, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles
For parents who rely on baby formula—whether by choice or due to medical necessity—the nationwide baby formula shortage has become increasingly difficult to ignore. According to the Wall Street Journal, Walgreens, Target, CVS, and Kroger have all begun rationing...
An Indictment of ‘Public Health’
by Kym Robinson | Mar 16, 2022 | Featured Articles
We live in an age of public health. Even in countries with private sector health care, government regulates and steers the practice of medicine. On the surface this may seem a positive. In theory it's an established framework to protect the patient and practitioners...
Reason Has Limits, But What Doesn’t?
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 2, 2022 | Blog
It is not a criticism of reason to acknowledge that no reasoning person or group can have a synoptic view of the world or of society that would enable him or it to rationally plan everything. The faculty of reason is packaged within individual human beings, and no...
How I Robbed the World Bank
by Jim Bovard | Dec 14, 2021 | Featured Articles
I have always had a bad attitude toward official secrets regardless of who is keeping them. That prejudice and John Kenneth Galbraith are to blame for an unauthorized withdrawal I made from the World Bank. When I lived in Boston in the late 1970s, I paid $25 to attend...
The Ron Paul Revolution: A Ten Year Retrospective
by Steven Woskow | Dec 5, 2021 | Blog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvMoJE7pxh4 Join Dr. Ron Paul and Tom Woods, plus very special guest Glenn Greenwald in Texas for an event you won't want to miss! Ron Paul's two campaigns for president (2008 and 2012) were watershed moments for liberty-minded people...
For Every Action There Is An Equal And Opposite Reaction
by Scott Shearin | Sep 17, 2021 | Blog
I never speak it out loud, but recently I’m constantly repeating a movie our daughter used to watch when she was little. Over the Hedge I believe it was called. I constantly hear the little squirrel straining to see the end of the newly constructed impediment, in his...
Blog
A Response to My Memorial Day Critics
My article against Memorial Day drew a lot of ire and attention. This should not have been surprising; I was making a controversial statement. What did surprise me, however, was that many critics were self-described libertarians or former libertarians. There were many...
Ignoring Political Gossip & Sticking to Principle
https://youtu.be/ZwWHjYVY4tg In the private sector, firms must attract voluntary customers or they fail; and if they fail, investors lose their money, and managers and employees lose their jobs. The possibility of failure, therefore, is a powerful incentive to find...
The Myth of “Hyper-Rugged-Isolationist-Individualism”
Myth #1: Libertarians believe that each individual is an isolated, hermetically sealed atom, acting in a vacuum without influencing each other. This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal...
The Lesson From Germany and Korea
Institutions are, of course, in some sense the products of culture. But, because they formalize a set of norms, institutions are often the things that keep a culture honest, determining how far it is conducive to good behaviour rather than bad. To illustrate the...
Occupational Licensing Increases Prices and Deprives People of Options
When you shop online, vendors usually give you a bunch of different ways to sort your options. Take Amazon: One popular sorting option – especially for customers with low income – is “Price: Low to High.” You’ve probably used it yourself many times. This...
Free Book: An Anarchist Critique of the COVID Mandates
I’ve had the opportunity to write a short book offering what is essentially an anarchist critique of COVID mandates. This includes the accusation that states did most of the killing rather than the virus. The 123-page book, Measuring the Mandates: Questioning the...
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