Schumpeter is famous as a leading 20th century formulator of the notion of the entrepreneur as dynamic innovator of change, and also as a master of the history of economic ideas.
MARKETS
Self Interest and The “Common Good”
A common exhortation heard today is: Set self-interest aside and act for the “common good.” Businesspeople in particular are accused of selfishness and are told (by media commentators, NGOs, and ethicists, among others) to serve the “common good.” This exhortation...
Individualism and Capitalism vs. Central Planning and Statism: The Political Battle of the 21st Century
If all of that dispersed and decentralized knowledge that exists in the individual minds of all the members of society is to be effectively used and brought to bear for mutual improvement of the human condition, each of us must be left free to use that knowledge as we, respectively, think best and most advantageous.
Lifting Sanctions on Iran a Mixed Bag
From a financial perspective, the New Year has been anything but happy. As of January 20th, the S&P had fallen over 9% since the beginning of the year, to levels not seen since 2014,reflecting a loss of some $2 trillion in market value. Compounding matters was the...
Statism vs. Capitalism: Why Government Cannot Manage The Economy, Part II
The more complex the social and economic system the less any single or handful of human minds could comprehend, master or manipulate the relationships for better outcomes than when the market was left free.
Statism vs. Capitalism: Why Government Cannot Manage The Economy, Part I
The “knowledge of the world” is dispersed and divided up in the minds of all the members of society, with each knowing and understanding only a small part relative to all the knowledge that exists in everybody’s minds, combined.
The New Nomenklatura: California’s “Progressive” Exclusionary Housing Market
Land prices skyrocket when the supply of land is artificially and drastically reduced, which means that housing prices become astronomical.
Protectionism Will Not Make America Great Again
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he will push for companies, including Apple Inc., to bring manufacturing back to the United States. “Make America great again,” Trump recently said in a speech at Liberty University in Virginia. “We’re going to get...
Politicians Ignorance of Capitalist Free Market Economics
Politicians can’t see the wonders that the market provides, but they somehow see everything government does as a blessing — taxes that cut into people’s pay and regulations that make it more expensive to produce. They don’t see that their well-intended “pro-consumer” rules raise prices and reduce choice.
Ending Government’s Monopoly Control Over Money
A central tool for governments to maintain their authority in society and their control over people’s lives is the ability to make the citizenry accept and use their monopoly medium of exchange.
Video: Why Businessmen Should Not Give Something Back
Don Watkins, co-author of the national bestseller “Free Market Revolution,” argues that businessmen do not have an obligation to “give something back.”
Book Review: Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James Can Teach You about Economics
By taxing income, businesses, and estates, government siphons off part of the ability for people to do the work, savings, and investment out of which wealth, opportunities, and prosperity come.
Minimum Wage Floors Increase Unemployment of Low-Skilled Labour
It is incompetence or dishonesty for my fellow economists to deny these two effects of minimum wages: discrimination against employment of low-skilled labor and the lowering of the cost of racial discrimination.
Feeling Abandoned, Saudi Arabia Ups the Ante
Last week a major diplomatic crisis developed between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the Saudi execution of Nimr al Nimr, a charismatic Shiite cleric and anti-Sunni political activist. Nimr’s execution was an important political decision. On its face, it served to...
Capitalism Supports Free Open Unions and Not Compulsory “Closed Shop” Ones
On the surface, labor unions make their appeal to society with rhetoric of claiming to want to better the conditions of all workers seeking gainful and income-enhancing employment. What is not as clearly seen are the indirect and usually unintended effects from compulsory unionism that end up keeping far too many in poverty and less remunerative jobs that the supporters of labor unions say they wish to help.
What Is Money Printing?
There is a populist idea of money printing. The idea is that banks can just print what they want, enriching themselves in a massive fraud. But, does it really work this way? Let’s start with a simple case, which is clearly not money printing. We will build a series of...
Falling Interest Causes Falling Profits
Most people assume that prices move as a result of changes in the money supply. Instead, let’s look at the effect of changes in interest.
China Takes a Big Step Forward
On November 30th the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it would admit China’s Renminbi currency, commonly known as the Yuan, to the select basket of reserve currencies that make up its Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s). Having been stalled by U.S....
How Mark Zuckerberg Could Truly Make The World a Better Place
If Zuckerberg truly wants to eliminate poverty and find cures for diseases, most of his money should be invested in profit-seeking businesses.
A Gold Standard Can Limit Government Monetary Abuse
The real long-run goal of monetary reform should be the denationalization of money. That is, the separation of money from the state by ending of central banking, altogether. In its place would emerge private, competitive free banking – a truly market-based money and banking system.
The State and 100 Percent Reserve Banking
Free bankers have been fighting a war on two fronts. On one they face champions of central banking and managed money. On the other they struggle against advocates of 100-percent reserve banking. Although the second front is a lot smaller than the first, it’s far from being unimportant, in part because the battle there is being fought against people who generally favor free markets, who might have been expected to join rather than to oppose our cause.
Will a GDP Futures Market Be Liquid?
Scott Sumner said he had a “modest” proposal: there should be a highly liquid futures market in Nominal Gross Domestic Product (NGDP). Let’s look at that.
European Union Challenged from Right and Left
The heinous ISIS attack in Paris is a game changer in Europe. In addition to the horrific amount of individual casualties, the attack has also threatened severe damage to the long term survivability of the European Union as a political entity. Based on the...
How Do People Destroy Their Capital?
The flip side of falling interest rates is the rising price of bonds. Bonds are in an endless, ferocious bull market. Why do I call it ferocious? Perhaps voracious is a better word, as it is gobbling up capital like the Cookie Monster jamming tollhouses into his maw. There are several mechanisms by which this occurs, let’s look at one here.
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