The Economics of Here to There

What the entire critique of advertising misses, writes Jeffrey Tucker, is the crucial and even decisive economic issue that is solved by the principle of marketing. How does a product or a service go from being a good idea or even a physical possibility to being available for people and available for consumption? Here is the major issue that has never been solved by any other system but capitalism. And capitalism solves it in a way that is wealth-generating and leads to constant improvements.

Time Will Run Back

Henry Hazlitt was uniquely qualified to write the first and only novel in which the problem of economic calculation provides the central plot theme. He was literary editor of the Nation from 1930 to 1933 and a highly regarded critic. He also understood Mises’s argument against socialism and how it went to the very core of the economic problem. Time Will Run Back — which has been out of print for a very long time but which is now available both online (in PDF) and from our store — is unique in other respects.

Francis Wayland: Preacher-Economist

One of the great but long-forgotten works of political economy from the nineteenth century was not written by a politician or an economist — it was written by the Baptist minister Francis Wayland (1796–1865). Laurence M Vance writes that he was equally an author, a preacher, a teacher, a pastor, and an administrator. Because he was a Baptist minister, it is no surprise that Wayland held to the absolute authority of the Bible. But he was equally an advocate of liberty, property, and peace.

US Edges Perilously Closer to World Economy

It seems a certain pizza chain in the American Southwest currently accepts Mexican pesos as well as dollars for their pies. This business practice resembles that not only of international airports all over the world (except possibly for airports in the US), but also the practices of at least some establishments, I should think, along the Canadian border of the US (Canadian dollars, of course, rather than pesos).

The New York Times Pushes the Doctrine of Class Warfare

My post of January 7 on this blog showed how The New York Times promotes the Green party line. The one before that showed how it has supported the Red party line. Like a traffic light, The New York Times alternates between Red and Green. (There is actually little fundamental difference between the two. The Reds want to abolish the individual’s pursuit of happiness on the grounds that it results in exploitation, monopolies, and depressions.

Good for Rod Dreher

From conservative author Rod Dreher, of National Review and the Dallas Morning News, on a broadcast essay at NPR:

“As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

“But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool....

Does the Third World Need More Laptops?

Jamaica is a nation where Jim Fedako’s students believed the solution to the country’s ills was to “ask for more money from President Bush.” Jim knew better. US aid rarely makes it to a small school in the countryside. There were too many dollar-hungry bureaucrats driving late-model Fords circling the government agencies and NGOs of the capital, Kingston, to allow much money to escape their grasps. And, it would not have mattered even if some money filtered through; the money always went for the PC when it was bicycle repairs that were needed. Mises long ago explained this inability for central planners to lead an economy in any direction other than down Chaos Avenue.

Planned Chaos

The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars, and revolutions is its anti-capitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise. It is an almost unchallenged dogma that capitalism is done for and that the coming of all-around regimentation of economic activities is both inescapable and highly desirable.

A Strange Way to Promote Freedom

Many people around the world, actually most people, have been convinced for some time that the US is being run by a power-mad lunatic. The video of the Saddam killing, which crystallized the extent to which extremist Shiites have taken over the country, has galvanized millions and confirmed the worst suspicions about what is going on in Iraq.

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