Over the past year, central banks, commercial bankers and prominent economists have expressed the view that digital money and transfers should replace large denomination cash and cash transactions. This dramatic transition has been fostered under the guise of the...
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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
Adam Smith on Moral Sentiments, Division of Labor and the Invisible Hand: Economic Ideas
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith applied Francis Hutcheson’s idea of “natural liberty” in formulating a conception of the meaning of individual freedom and the role and functions of limited government in a free society.
Economics Ideas: David Hume on Self-Coordinating and Correcting Market Processes
Hume presented a devastating criticism of Mercantilist thinking on trade and commerce, while at the same time, demonstrating the self-regulating and “balancing” forces of the market process.
Economic Ideas: Adam Ferguson and Society as a Spontaneous Order
One of the most cherished misunderstandings, if not delusions, of the social engineer – the individual who would presume to attempt to remake society through conscious and planned design – is the confident belief that he (and those like him) can ever know enough to successfully remold mankind and human institutions.
Money and Banking Under Laissez-Faire Capitalism
This talk examines the development, operation and performance of monetary systems in the absence of government intervention.
Monopoly Money: The Destabilizing Consequences of Central Banking
How currency monopolies promote booms and busts, and having a lender of last resort leads to moral hazard and financial instability.
Economic Ideas: Adam Ferguson and Society as a Spontaneous Order
Society was not created by design to provide safety and security, but, instead, freedom and rights emerged and evolved out of more primitive forms of tribal and collective association as responses to considered injustices and abusive power.
Fraud is Not an Ethical Dilemma: Avoiding Scams Like the Wells Fargo Fake Accounts
Clear moral principles, such as honesty, make the right—the self-interested, win-win—course of action so much easier.
Economic Ideas: Francis Hutcheson and a System of Natural Liberty
Adam Smith was one of Hutcheson’s students in Glasgow, and his influence on Adam Smith was singularly significant, from everything from the importance of division of labor and the role of private property, to the normative notion of a free society based on a “system of natural liberty.”
Economic Ideas: Bernard Mandeville and the Social Betterment Arising from Private Vices
The “moral” that Mandeville drew from his tale was that prosperous, wealthy and great societies only arise from men’s self-interested desires, and that is what made for successful civilizations:
Trump: Wrong On Free Trade
Protectionism is not a recipe for prosperity—free trade is.
The Corporate Social Responsibility “Package Deal”
CSR also sneaks in the ideal of altruism, the duty to serve others “to further some social good, beyond the interests of the firm.”
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 7: Monetary Control, Then
“Monetary control” refers to the various procedures and devices the Fed and other central banks employ in their attempts to regulate the overall availability of liquid assets, and through it the general course of spending, prices, and employment, in the economies they oversee.
Reforming Last-Resort Lending: The Flexible Open Market Alternative
I regard any need for last-resort lending as reflecting, not the inherent shortcomings of private financial markets, but the debilitating effects of misguided regulatory interference with the free development of those markets.
Bad Business: The Moral Sanction of the Regulatory State
By clearly and publicly withdrawing their moral sanction of government’s freedom-curtailing and welfare-destroying actions, business leaders can have a big impact on all of our future.
King of Debt Takes the Reins
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 provides the best recent precedent for the unexpected triumph of Donald Trump (in my opinion, the other post-war Republican takeovers of the White House --Ike in ’52, Nixon ’68, and W. in ’00 – did not constitute a real break from...
King of Debt Takes the Reins
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 provides the best recent precedent for the unexpected triumph of Donald Trump (in my opinion, the other post-war Republican takeovers of the White House --Ike in ’52, Nixon ’68, and W. in ’00 – did not constitute a real break from...
Trump Triumphs as Brexit Faces a Serious Threat
Brexit and the Donald Trump presidential victory should rightly be viewed as the most significant international developments of the last decade. Both events illustrate a breaking down of globalist order and they both threaten the entrenched elite that has so...
Trump Triumphs as Brexit Faces a Serious Threat
Brexit and the Donald Trump presidential victory should rightly be viewed as the most significant international developments of the last decade. Both events illustrate a breaking down of globalist order and they both threaten the entrenched elite that has so...
Inflation, Price Controls and Collectivism During the French Revolution: Economic Ideas
When governments find it impossible to continue raising taxes or borrowing funds, they have invariably turned to printing paper money to finance their growing expenditures. The political economy of the French Revolution is a tragic example of this.
The French Physiocrats and the Case for Laissez-Faire: Economic Ideas
The best policy for government to follow is “laisser passer, laisser faire” — let goods pass and leave men alone to their own decisions.
Mercantilism as Monarchy’s Planned Economy: Economic Ideas
Mercantilism developed in the emerging nation-states under the kings, especially, in France and Spain and in Great Britain, as a set of economic tools to assist in bringing about the centralization of political power and control.
Midnight in America
Stunned political analysts are missing the most plausible argument explaining Donald Trump's unexpected victory. The misreading of the American electorate stems from the political class’ acceptance of mistaken (and increasingly insane) economic dogma that has arisen...
The Church, “Just Price” and Interest: The Institutions and Economics of the Middle Ages, Part 2
The Catholic Church had a set of fundamental beliefs and principles that set it apart from the Greek and Roman views that had preceded it, and which were to have importance in the future in terms of their economic impact.
The Election’s Bearing on Monetary Freedom
The sad reality is that the battle for monetary freedom has for some time now taken the form of a rearguard action, aimed at resisting as much as possible ever-increasing government incursions into an ever-shrinking realm of financial choice.
Manorial and Guild Systems: The Institutions and Economics of the Middle Ages, Part 1
Political, social, and economic life in the Middle Ages revolved around two sets of institutions.
The Perils of Financial Over-Regulation
Financial systems, like economies generally, are organic entities. They must be allowed to flourish in a natural way.
Globalization Faces Challenges
For much of the second half of the 20th Century, and even into the new millennium, “Globalization” was the dominant theme used to describe the drift of the world economy. It was widely considered both natural and inevitable that the world economy would continue to...
An Introduction to Austrian Economics (Part 9 of 9): Booms and Busts
Government Regulation of Business: Protection or Harm?
Government should get out of regulating business at all, including regulations on product safety, emissions, and dealing with industrial waste.
An Introduction to Austrian Economics (Part 8 of 9): Government Intervention
The Ancient Romans: From Rule of Law to Price Controls
The area in which the Ancient Romans did leave a body of thought, and one that has had lasting influence and significance for future generations, especially in the West up until our own time was in the area of law and contract.