Subjectivism

It’s laudable when we give gifts that are truly ours to give. This should not be confused with giving away the property of others. In either case, if we want more wealth to give away, we have to produce wealth first.

Do women really pay more than men for the "same" goods and services? No. Not only are these supposedly identical goods not actually identical, but the consumers value them differently, leading to different prices.

Economists Robert Shiller and George Akerlof would have us believe that the market sells us things we don’t really want. That’s not true, but even if it were, the proposed solution — government — is even less likely to give us what we want.

Many advocates for free markets often mistakenly speak of "the market" as if markets by themselves somehow solve problems or provide incentives. Only people can do these things, and markets are just a means to an end.

Lego has finally managed to attract girls to their products with the Lego Friends line. In response, feminists have denounced the line for being too "girly." But Lego is just responding to market demand and what Mises called consumer sovereignty.

Rather than a cold estimate of the probability of future returns, the Powerball actually illustrates the subjective theory of value.

There were many state and local elections in the US this week, but few of them will result in anything that will combat widely held and popular errors about central banking, drug prohibition, and the global environment.

Without markets, there is no way to manage scarce resources, and this includes natural resources like forests. Only markets can provide the sort of balanced long-term planning necessary to both utilize and preserve natural resources.

Investors and real estate agents often tell people to “buy land, they’re not making any more!” But in truth, land is heterogeneous, and whether or not it increases in value depends on many factors that can transform nearly worthless land into valuable land.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 20 July 2015.