Other Schools of Thought

The question is not whether economic progress makes people happy. Most mothers feel happier if their children survive, and most people feel happier without tuberculosis than with it.

Rothbard’s work on welfare economics probably ranks among his least-known achievements, but it is truly a tour de force and another tribute to his great originality and talent as an economist.

The fundamental error of the interventionists is that they ignore the shortage of capital goods.

Activists who genuinely believe the world faces catastrophe should give serious consideration to David Henderson’s reasons for thinking a carbon tax might be a false “solution."

By advocating an increased monetary role for the state, Keynes has made the credit cycle considerably worse and more destabilising.

The General Theory is not a book explaining economics to his followers at all, but a propaganda tool to lead them to his vision of a non-Marxist socialist nirvana.

Population growth and specialization are not enough to make economies grow. The key ingredient is entrepreneurship.

One of the great and most persistent errors of classical liberals is to believe in "good government," a government that does "what it is supposed to do." But no state empowered to do what is supposedly necessary will restrain itself to those things. It will expand as much as public opinion will tolerate.

Dressing up the history of the world, and its economic development, in terms of transaction costs is mostly not very helpful.

"Herein lies the key to changing society — changing public opinion or people's preferences toward government. And the only way people are likely to change their preferences is through education and persuasion; force is ineffective."