Socialism isn’t known for making things affordable, if for no other reason that its price controls make so many things unavailable. Capitalism not only creates new, never-before-seen goods but transforms them from luxuries into necessities.
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Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. – AYN RAND
What Would Happen If New York Ended Rent Control?
NY tried it for “luxury” apartments in the 1990s, and it boosted the supply of housing.
Inflation Is the Plan
Every dollar of real value that inflation strips off the government’s obligations is a dollar stripped off the savings of whoever holds Treasury bonds, notes, and bills.
Fifty Years of Parking Lots
When saying no is free, the cost is enormous.
Ludwig von Mises: Defender of Capitalism
Ludwig Von Mises is important because his teachings are necessary to the preservation of capitalism and thus of civilization.
Antitrust History: The American Tobacco Case of 1911
A long accepted assumption in the area of government and business relations is that the “classic” monopoly cases of antitrust history clearly demonstrate the need for, and justify the existence of, the antitrust laws.
The Inherent Weakness of Price Collusion
The following article is a brief explanation of some of the economic factors that appear to make price-fixing agreements between firms difficult to sustain, even in the absence of direct legal prohibition.
How Labor Unions Can Be Anti-Labor
To anyone who understands the role of the productivity of labor in raising real wages, it should be obvious that the unions’ policy of combating the rise in the productivity of labor renders them in fact a leading enemy of the rise in real wages.
Jeff Bezos Earned His Amazon Fortune
The Amazon founder’s innovations save customers 22 hours a year on average, giving them the gift of time.
Can’t Afford a House? Blame Government, Not Big Investors for Higher Housing Costs
Government, not investors, is the root problem of housing prices. Rather than take on barriers to construction, politicians find it easier to blame Wall Street.
How Zoning Makes Housing Expensive and Cities Less Interesting
Walk through almost any beloved old Manhattan neighborhood and you quickly run into a strange fact: much of the city people love would be illegal to build today. In 2016, The New York Times published an analysis titled “Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today.” Using data from Quantierra, the […]
Price Fixing at the Pump
Is it the legitimate role of government to pressure or threaten private businesses over the prices they voluntarily charge for their own property?
Is Bitcoin an Investment or a Speculation?
What a neighborhood cigar shop can teach you about the global financial system — and about whether you’re an investor or a speculator.
The Economics of Price Fixing
Almost every piece of price-fixing legislation produces results opposite to those intended.
Mamdani’s Affordable Slize of Pizza For All
If price controls make housing affordable, New York’s favorite food deserves the same protection. Mayor Mamdani, Please Freeze the Price of Pizza!
Stablecoins Are Money
Payment stablecoins – a new way for governments to print money – are manifestly and intrinsically inflationary.
Is Congress Really Going to Give President Trump New Tariff Powers?
After years of watching the two Trump administrations stretch virtually every trade statute they could find past the breaking point, Congress’ plan is to write the current administration a brand new one—voluntarily and on a bipartisan basis.
Why Capitalism Isn’t As Popular As It Should Be
The fundamental reason for not having full capitalism is its conflict with the prevailing moral code, altruism, that motivates voters’ preferences.
Are Stablecoins Money?
A new kind of money: what “payment stablecoins” mean for the debt, the dollar, and you.
The Anatomy of Deflation
Deflation is usually thought to be a synonym for falling prices. There could be no more serious error in all of economics.
Classical Economics Versus The Exploitation Theory
The fundamental place to challenge the exploitation theory is not over the labor theory of value or the iron law of wages, but here, over its conceptual framework—over the doctrines of the primacy of wages and the deduction of profits from wages.
F. A. Hayek’s “Use of Knowledge in Society”
Localized knowledge of time and space is knowledge that a person learns and knows about only in the everyday circumstances of the corners of society in which he lives and works.
Inflation Mind Tricks
Rising prices are a symptom of inflation, but just as a fever is not the same thing as the disease that caused it, rising prices are not the same thing as inflation itself.
Establishment of Gold as Money (Part 6 of 10)
The establishment of gold as money is essential to the achievement of a capitalist society.
The Freedom of Production and Trade Under Capitalism (Part 3 of 10)
An appropriate vehicle for the establishment of the freedom of production and trade, whether all at once or gradually, would be the establishment of one last regulatory-type agency: the Deregulation Agency.
NYC Mayor Mamdani Discovers the Bankruptcy of Rent Control
End rent control. Legalize housing investment. Let prices tell the truth. Let builders build. Let landlords maintain their buildings. Let tenants freely move. Let New York grow again.
Capitalism Must Be Defended at the Moral Level
Don’t let those who support socialism take the moral high ground because their morality is wrong.
The Fed’s Fatal Conceit
In my experience, the Federal Reserve is guilty of what F. A. Hayek (1989) called “‘the fatal conceit”–that is, the belief that smart people can do the impossible. I don’t care how smart you are or how great your mathematical models are, you cannot coordinate the economic activity of seven billion people on this planet.
Morality in a Capitalist Economy
It is always in one’s rational self-interest to be ethical.
The Myth That Foreigners Pay Our Tariffs
The costs of tariffs are always shared — and domestic citizens inevitably bear a significant portion of the burden.
US Shipbuilding and the Jones Act
US-built ships cost approximately five times as much as those constructed in South Korea.
Jones Act Undermines U.S. National Security & Economy in Both War and Peace
If the Jones Act must be suspended to address national security emergencies, why do we keep it in place during times of peace? Why keep it around at all?