American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a Nation
Sarah L. Quinn
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2019
289 pp.
Patrick Newman (patrick.newm1@gmail.com) is assistant professor of economics at Florida Southern College and a fellow of its Center for Free Enterprise. He is also a fellow of the Mises Institute.
Ribatarianizumu: Amerika wo yurugasu jiyūshijōshugi
(Libertarianism: The Ultrafreedomism Shaking Up America, published only in Japanese)
Yasushi Watanabe
Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2019
213 pp.
Jason Morgan (jmorgan3@wisc.edu) is associate professor at Reitaku University in Chiba, Japan.
Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost
Caitlin Zaloom
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019
viii + 267 pp.
Unprofitable Schooling: Examining Causes of, and Fixes for, America’s Broken Ivory Tower
Todd J. Zywicki and Neal P. McCluskey, eds.
Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2019
268 pp.
Jason Morgan (jmorgan3@wisc.edu) is associate professor at Reitaku University in Chiba, Japan.
Abstract: Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski’s The People’s Republic of Walmart entered the scene in 2019 with the remarkable idea that mammoth firms such as Walmart and Amazon, by being able to direct huge volumes of resources—sometimes with the capacity of entire countries—without an inner market to signal prices, are living evidence of the viability of a collectively planned economy. Moreover, they argue that the nondemocratic command system that often accompanies the structure of firms is due to their operation in a profit-seeking market system.
Abstract: The concept of intellectual property (IP) has been variously criticized as incompatible with natural rights and detrimental to the dissemination of innovations. In this paper I argue that it can be criticized on an even more fundamental level—namely as a praxeological impossibility.
Media pundits and politicians are now in the habit of claiming it was the pandemic itself that has caused unemployment to skyrocket and economic growth to plummet. The claim is that sick and dying workers, fearful consumers, and disrupted supply chains would cause economic chaos.
