https://youtu.be/L1cGI5U_UaA
Poverty, Churchill, Free Markets, Iran, and Shortages (Weekly Roundtable)
free markets
4/22/22 Ryan McMaken on Capitalism and Peace
Download Episode. Scott talks with Ryan McMaken about free markets and free trade. They begin with a discussion about the role of the Mises Institute in the push for sound money. Scott then asks McMaken about the nuances of debating capitalism vs. socialism while living under a mixed economy. They then discuss the changing role of the United States in the world. McMaken does believe a “rules-based international order” existed after the fall of the USSR. But that the U.S. destroyed it by invading Iraq in 2003. McMaken argues that the best path forward is a commitment to the classical...
Capitalism Puts the Poor First
The socialist left says the evidence capitalism oppresses the poor is that free markets relocate factories to the poorest nations in order to pay the lowest wages. And when wage rates rise in poor nations like South Korea and Japan, they move their factories over to new poor nations like China and Indonesia, and then again likewise on to the next poor nations like Vietnam and Bangladesh. I see that as evidence of the opposite; it's evidence of free markets bringing jobs to the poorest-of-the-poor, raising their living standards to humane levels over a generation or two, and then moving on...
TGIF: Get Rich Quicker!
"I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” --John Stuart Mill, 1828 We mustn't let the wrongdoing of politicians and bureaucrats blind us to the good things going on in the world. Outside the political realm, many things are doing pretty darn well. The long-term trends for many indicators have been positive for the last couple of centuries. Short-term disturbances, most often the result of political mischief, are temporary, and the progress resumes when the politicians...
Is Wholefoods’ ‘Conscious Capitalism’ Effective Altruism
Wholefoods, one of the most consciously ethical companies in the world, was picketed by animal rights activists in 2003. At first, CEO John Mackey was incensed. After all, Wholefoods are the good guys! Couldn't these would-be revolutionaries take their complaints to McDonalds or Walmart? After some reflection Mackey, the libertarian author of Conscious Capitalism (2013), decided that it might not be a bad idea to sit down with the activists and hear what they had to say. Asking them, “Why did you attack us?” he received the rather touching response: “Because we thought you would listen....
TGIF: Liberty as a Problem-Solving Process
Strictly speaking, liberty isn't the solution to problems. It's what creates the framework in which solutions can be discovered. That is an important distinction because it reminds us that advocates of full-blown liberty do not offer the world a problem-free society but "only" a society in which problems are discovered and problem-solvers are mobilized as quickly, fairly, and efficiently as impossible. To get this point across to students in lectures, I used to quote the the title of a 1970 hit record: "I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden." Social troubles will not...
Beware Political Creationists
"With few exceptions, the tribe of academic scientists and hospital doctors which now controls our government has literally never heard such arguments [the unplanned order of thee market process]. Their worldview is a top-down one: they assume things happen because somebody ordains that things happen. Spontaneous order is a foreign concept to them. This is surprising, given that it is the essence of evolution, but when it comes to society they are in thrall to intelligent-design theories. They are political creationists." --Matt Ridley, "Britain Is in Danger of Repeating Its Post-War...
TGIF: Does Nearly Everyone Favor Industrial Policy?
Over the years I've heard countless arguments about which word best describes the American economic system. Some insist it is essentially socialist, while others favor the word fascism. (Fascism is socialism with a private-property and market veneer.) Still others describe the system as a mixed, or interventionist, economy. We need not decide among these because the huge system has many facets, at least some of which at some time or other have fit one or more of these terms. One term we might all agree on, however, is industrial policy. That's because it is general enough to cover almost...
TGIF: The Bias against Advertising
People who dislike markets harbor a special animosity toward advertising as cynically controlling. This is not new. In the mid-20th century John Kenneth Galbraith and other market opponents condemned advertising as business's way to manipulate people into buying things they had no real need for and actually didn't want. To hear them tell it, the consumer is not an agent but a puppet, with advertisers as the puppet masters. This position was and is wrong--Galbraith and his colleagues, I suspect, did not think they were helpless buyers--and it was debunked by sensible people, including...
My Appearance with Nate the Voluntaryist
Nate the Voluntaryist and I talked about free markets and capitalism on his podcast. Listen here.
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