For a 1,000 square foot apartment—smaller than many cities allow without expensive variance permit processes—a developer would need to charge at least $2,750 per month just to break even.
MARKETS
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
Big Tech Firms Like Facebook, Amazon, and Google Are Not Monopolies
Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Alphabet (Google), and other Big Tech companies are not monopolies. They have achieved their dominance through competition. Success through competition is a part of competition.
Money From Nothing, Part 2
Those dollar bills in your pocket came from bank deposits, created out of thin air.
Money From Nothing
How does money come into existence today?
Americans Oppose Amy Klobuchar’s Assault on Big Tech
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would erode the consumer welfare standard and move our antitrust model closer to those seen in communist China and parts of Europe.
Top 1% of U.S. Earners Hold an Unprecedented Portion of the Wealth
There’s nothing unfair about wealth disparity in a free market, but the economic divide caused by QE is a gross injustice.
Unmasking Inflation, Part 2
Is consumer price inflation transitory or persistent?
Is a Society without Money Possible or Desirable?
Those who advocate a world without money advocate an impossible fantasy where nobody would be incentivized to work and rights would be violated as a matter of course.
Unmasking Inflation
The Fed’s fixation on consumer prices disguises the real inflation rate.
Only ‘Antitrust’ Policy That’s Needed is Freedom of Entry
Antitrust blocks the competitive process. It does so by substituting the meager knowledge and imaginations of economists, lawyers, courts, bureaucrats, and politicians for the actual, creative head-to-head competition that occurs within markets.
False Profits
Record profits are not the sign of a resilient economy but an inflationary effect of reckless money creation
The Zombie Ship of Theseus: Bitcoin vs Gold
The current fiat monetary system is a zombified version of the original and Bitcoin is no answer to the perversion of a gold sound money system.
The Impact of Higher Inflation on US Asset Class Returns
Central banking “independence” from politics (fiscal profligacy) seems to be a thing of the past.
Elon Musk, Person of the Year, Radicalized by Lockdowns
Elon Musk has turned into a true American, a resistor, a revolutionary. His influence in business and philosophical outlook offers a real path forward. He deserves every congratulations for refusing to go along with ruling-class ideology and instead demand that most essential thing, the freedom to trade, speak, run a business, and innovate without government interference.
The Virtue of Business
Instead of disdain and condemnation, businesses and businesspeople deserve our gratitude.
The Virtuous Circle of Profits and People
It’s mistaken to think that pursuing profits harms people. Profit-seeking by business does not harm but rather benefits people, beyond its owners.
What Economic Advice Would You Give to a Future King?
Carl Menger’s Free Market Advice to an Austrian Crown Prince
Can the Supply Chain Explain the Rise of Inflation?
It is more convenient for the government to argue that inflation is due to supply-chain shocks or scapegoats (such as evil corporations) than admitting it is of their own doing.
What Money Is, and What It Isn’t
A Three-Pronged Blunder, or, what Money is, and what it isn’t.
The Anti-Capitalist Mentality: “Anticommunism” versus Capitalism (Part 5 of 5)
What these self-styled “anticommunist liberals” are fighting against is not communism as such, but a communist system in which they themselves are not at the helm.
The Anti-Capitalist Mentality: The Noneconomic Objections to Capitalism (Part 4 of 5)
Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the most clever and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little. The innovation is first a luxury of only a few people, until by degrees it comes into the reach of the many.
The Anti-Capitalist Mentality: Literature Under Capitalism (Part 3 of 5)
The tycoon of the book market is the author of fiction for the masses.
The Anti-Capitalist Mentality: The Failure To Comprehend The Nature of Capitalism (Part 2 of 5)
The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody. The process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples’ want satisfaction.
The Anti-Capitalist Mentality: Why Do People Loathe Capitalism? (Part 1 of 5)
On the the social characteristics of capitalism and the psychological causes of Its vilification.
The Economics of Socialism (Part 5)
He who expects a rational economic system from socialism will be forced to re-examine his views.
The Economics of Socialism (Part 4)
The exclusion of free initiative and individual responsibility, on which the successes of private enterprise depend, constitutes the most serious menace to socialist economic organization.
The Economics of Socialism, Part 3
Is there no way in which some kind of economic calculation might be tied up with a socialist system?
The Economics of Socialism, Part 2
Socialism is the abolition of rational economy. There is only groping in the dark.
The Economics of Socialism, Part 1
In the cloud-cuckoo lands of socialist fancy, roast pigeons will fly into the mouths of the comrades,with no realistic explanation of how this miracle is to take place.
Inflation: Transitory Permanence
In fact, relying on the government to tell us the truth about inflation is a bit like asking high school students to grade their own report cards.
Fair Trade Is Still a Fraud
Government cannot make trade more fair by making it less free.
Biden Administration Embraces Trump’s Mercantalist Economics
The Biden Administration has decided to extend Trump’s mercantilist trade policies. Hostility to free trade Is now officially bipartisan.