Value and Exchange

Volume 17, No. 4 (Winter 2014)

Eswar S. Prasad
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, 432 pages

Our daily lives are determined by our choices as individual economic actors.

Our daily lives are determined by our choices as individual economic actors. When governments intervene in our personal economics, they intervene in our personal preferences and choices.

Some music aficionados are complaining that the market's efforts to better deliver what people want are encouraging "bad music." In truth, music markets are providing more opportunities for the making of new music than ever before.

True welfare and value can only be achieved through exchange when it is fully voluntary.

True welfare and value can only be achieved through exchange when it is fully voluntary. When the state intervenes to "improve" trade, it destroys value, all the government stats notwithstanding.

Opponents of free markets sometimes describe market competition of dog-eat-dog, but that metaphor has nothing to do with markets and everything to

Opponents of free markets sometimes describe market competition of dog-eat-dog, but that metaphor has nothing to do with markets and everything to do with politics and war.

Cantillon defines wealth as the consumption goods produced by land and labor.

Mises Daily Monday by Peter St. Onge. "Giving back" is big these days, but how can we know if we're really making a contribution that someone values?