“Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little. The innovation is first a luxury of only a few people, until by degrees it comes into the reach of the many.” So writes Mises in the Anticapitalistic Mentality.
March is National Women’s History Month. But despite the heightened attention it brings to the influence women have had in American history, one woman, in particular, continues to get far too little attention-Mercy Otis Warren (178-1814), whom Elizabeth Ellet called “the most remarkable woman who lived in the days of the American Revolution,” and of whom John Adams said “of all the geniuses which have yet arisen in America, there has been none superior.”
During the first week of March Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan aired his views on tax reform in front of Bush’s appointed panel on the topic. Greenspan advocated the introduction of consumption taxes, to which I replied with this letter to the Financial Times of London.
Sir-
Worried about the federal deficit? The dollar? The global monetary system? You can relax now. Bloomberg columnist Caroline Baum writes Every Problem Is an Opportunity for U.S. Economy. Baum writes:
Companies shouldn’t feel obligated to ``give back’’ to the community, because they haven’t taken anything away, the Austrian-born chief of the world’s largest food company told local executives yesterday. In a stunning broadside to corporate citizenship as Bostonians have come to know it, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe - head of Nestle S.A.
Apropos Stephen Carson comes another discussion about entrepreneurs and business models:
An article in the New York Times once again illustrates how tenuous “market power” is. In How the iPod Ran Circles Around the Walkman, Silicon Valley based historian Randall Stross points out that all of Sony’s market dominance of the past did not help it when the iPod came along, (emphasis mine):
After my article on the Heritage Foundation’s Economic freedom index I received a lot of e-mail, almost all positive. I was actually somewhat disappointed (but not completely surprised) that even though I know people associated with the index reads this web page no one even tried to defend the index against the arguments I made, or alternatively if they had no counter-argument against my arguments, admit that they made some mistakes.
