(Barthelemy) Charles (Pierre Joseph) Dunoyer (1786–1862) was born on May 20, 1786 at Carennac in ancient Turenne (Quercy, Cahorsin), the present-day Lot. His father, Jean-Jacques- Philippe Dunoyer, was seigneur de Segonzac. Destined at an early age for the order of St. Jean de Malte, he began his education in the order’s near-by house at Martel. With the confiscation of the order’s houses in 1792, his aunt, formerly of the Visitation order, and, then, the former Benedictine prior of Carennac, continued his education at home.

I have recently written about the cultural, political, and ideological problems that contribute to the decline in higher education, but colleges also suffer from long-standing institutional shortcomings.

Simply put, the term “higher education” is, in many ways, a misnomer, as the university system is not designed to produce quality educational experiences. This is due to three major problems: extreme institutional stickiness, the lack of division of labor, and tenure.

[This article is adapted from A Guide to Good Money: Beyond the Illusions of Asset Inflation by Brendan Brown and Robert Pringle (2022, Palgrave Macmillan).]

Bad money regimes base themselves on a dysfunctional social contract.

Is praxeology inconsistent? Praxeologists criticize neoclassical economists for using false assumptions in their models. For example, neoclassicals acknowledge that the conditions for “perfect competition” are never found in the actual world. Firms selling a good such as wheat may not have much control over price, but they aren’t perfect “price takers,” as perfect competition requires. Nevertheless, the model is useful, neoclassicals aver, for generating predictions about the real-world behavior of certain firms.

Pascal Salin is an economist, professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Dauphine, and was president of the Mont-Pelerin Society from 1994 to 1996.

When a person is free to work, shop, and invest, he brings to each task his knowledge from doing the other tasks. As he works, he has a sense of what it takes to please customers, because he’s also a customer. As he shops, he has a sense of what workers can do for him, because he’s also a worker. As he invests, he has a sense of who adds value best, because he also works to add value and shops for value.