How to Make Hand Sanitizer Reappear on Store Shelves
As grappling with COVID-19 has required rapid and difficult decisions by world leaders to protect the public, it has been easy to overlook some of the lessons basic economics can teach us about prices. I taught economics for several years, and this topic that we covered in the first few sessions of each semester comes to mind as I watch today’s events unfold.
Lebanon’s Debt Crisis Has Destroyed the Nation’s Economy
On October 17, 2019, civil protest erupted in Lebanon. The reason for the eruption was a proposed tax on the popular WhatsApp app.1 The tax served as only a spark to ignite the uprising. Over the years the economy of Lebanon has been steadily worsening. Of course, the usual suspect is the state, and the preferred method is interventionism.
Equality and Levelling Down
The British philosopher Derek Parfit, who died in 2017, was by no means a libertarian. So far as I know, his political views were conventionally leftist. But he destroys egalitarianism with his levelling down objection.
In an Age of Pandemics We Need More Freedom to Trade, Not Less
There are many who use the coronavirus crisis to blame freedom to trade for the current epidemic. And, of course, there are those who are already arguing for autarky, closing our borders, and producing everything locally.
But we have been living in a world that relies on trade between different populations since the birth of civilization.
Government Overreach in the Age of COVID-19
In times of crisis, governments have a tendency to overcompensate for risk. This tendency may be in the public’s best interest, but it could also serve broader governmental interests. The public and government’s interest are not always one and the same.
How the CDC Prevented Fast and Accurate Testing for COVID-19
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.
The coronavirus crisis has exposed how the federal health bureaucracy (i.e., the CDC and the FDA) has stymied progress and a quick response over and over again.
Keynes Called Himself a Socialist. He Was Right.
Introduction
In 1997 Ralph Raico published an article titled “Keynes and the Reds.” Raico’s article highlighted John Maynard Keynes’s review of a 1936 book by the British socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb called Soviet Communism. In his review, Keynes discusses Joseph Stalin’s USSR and concludes: “The result is impressive.” For Raico, a historian in the classical liberal tradition, this statement contradicts the conventional idea that Keynes was a model liberal.
