Artificial intelligence dominates the headlines with equal measures of fascination and dread. Visionaries proclaim it will unlock human potential, while skeptics warn it will eliminate jobs, destabilize society, and force governments to provide sweeping handouts. Some believe it heralds a “post‑work” society in which billions are displaced. But fears that AI will “end the economy” are rooted, not in economics, but in misunderstanding basic Austrian principles. Technology changes how we arrange our resources—it does not abolish scarcity, value, or entrepreneurship.

Many people were shocked to see the identitarian left erupting in ghoulish celebration when news broke that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated.

By now, it’s a very well known historical narrative: during the Middle Ages, kings were all powerful over their subjects. They ruled with a divine right, and therefore could raise taxes at will. After all, as God’s chosen rulers on earth, who would contradict them? Certainly not the king’s subject who, with the help of the Church, were all utterly cowed by the idea that to disobey the king was to risk eternal damnation. 

Say’s Law of Markets advances the self-evident truth that supply and demand are two sides of the same coin, meaning one can view economic output as supply as well as demand. Demand is measured by what producers produce. Supply is measured by what producers produce.

In a state of nature, one’s own economic demand is dependent on and measured by one’s production. Survival requires people to work to that end. As civilization emerged, producers began trading with one another, exchanging something they had for something they wanted.

[Originally published by the Institutional Risk Analyst.]

John Rawls can be called many things, but “libertarian” isn’t one of them. To combine Rawls and libertarianism doesn’t seem like a promising project, but this is just what John Tomasi, a political philosopher who taught at Brown University when his book Free Market Fairness was published in 2012, attempted to do. The book remains the best and most comprehensive defense of the position just described.

Praxeology is defined as “the study of human conduct.” This study is one building cornerstone in Austrian economics showing individual choices are key for a person’s future direction. We thank Ludwig von Mises for pioneering praxeology and its importance to one of his defining books, Human Action.