An an editor of publications with a distinct ideological bent, I sometimes hear that it’s important to strive to avoid “preaching to the choir” or “preaching to the converted.”

It’s difficult to generalize what is meant when this phrase is used. Some users of the phrase think it’s a waste of time for any group to discuss important topics among the members. Why discuss laissez-faire economics (or any topic) with other people who already agree?

Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
Quinn Slobodian
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018, X + 381 pp.

David Gordon (dgordon@mises.com) is a Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 21, no. 3 (Fall 2018) full issue, click here.

Quinn Slobodian, a historian at Wellesley College, tells us that Globalists

Mateusz Machaj (mateusz.machaj@uwr.edu.pl) is research fellow at the Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem; and assistant professor at the Institute of Economic Sciences, the University of Wroclaw.

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 21, no. 3 (Fall 2018) full issue, click here.

While everyone was chatting about the 2018-2019 United States government shutdown, House Democrats introduced a universal background check bill H.R. 8 on January 8, 2019.

My wife and I read a quirky newsletter you won’t find online called the Belly of the Beast. It is the source of this startling but then again not surprising information: Academic researchers publish 2-3 million papers a year, most of it funded by governments. Most of the results of the this research are published in copyright protected journals owned by private companies, especially the giant German company Elsevier, companies that together are thought to earn over $25 billion.

Listen to Ryan McMaken’s commentary on the Radio Rothbard podcast.

Among advocates for free-markets, I’m often told that the unconverted will embrace free-markets if only we explain to them “good economics.”