Trust is a crucial ingredient for economic growth and innovation. Without the engine of trust fueling, the free flow of ideas innovation would come to a scurrying halt. Before people can cooperate in business and research, they must harvest an environment that cultivates trust. Through the cross fertilization of different viewpoints, we reap the fruits of innovation. Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street would not exist if creative minds were unwilling to share ideas.

Market reforms in Africa can be thwarted because of propaganda asserting that markets are a Western import. Notwithstanding the currency of this belief, it is patently absurd. Markets flourished in Africa prior to colonialism, and wherever they are repressed, the result is social immiseration, as economist William Hutt points out in his pathbreaking study, The Economics of the Colour Bar.

I just came across and article which reminded me that this November 16 was the 15th anniversary of the death of Milton Friedman, one of the past century’s greatest advocates of freedom. As someone who has followed his writing for most of my adult life, I can barely believe he has been gone that long. On the other hand, the abyss between the freedom he advocated and the world we now inhabit is so vast, I can barely believe he has only been gone that long.

It is commonplace to hear about how much more we know than our ancestors. And many have long taken that to imply that we are more advanced than they were, or that the accumulation of knowledge will continue to improve (progress, if you claim to be a progressive) over time.

By most commentators, since the early 1980s, correlations between various definitions of money and national income have broken down. The reason for this breakdown, it is held, is financial deregulation that made the demand for money unstable. Because of financial deregulation the nature of financial markets has changed; consequently, past definitions of money no longer hold.

Most recent data continue to show a visible acceleration in “price inflation,” with the yearly growth rate of the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) rising to 6.2 percent in October from 5.4 percent in September and 1.2 percent in October of last year—its highest level since December 1990.

Pathways to Policy Failure
by Gary Galles
American Institute for Economic Research, 2020, 490 pp.

Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom
by Rob Larson
Zero Books, 2018, 233 pp.

Rob Larson, who is a professor of economics at Tacoma Community College in Washington, does not agree with Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, and Friedman that the free market promotes freedom and prosperity and that socialism is the “road to serfdom.” That is an understatement, and you won’t find any understatements in this book. To the contrary, the book abounds in wild accusations.

Parents across America were caught unprepared for the mass closure of government schools in 2020. Soon after, however, many decided they and their children had had enough of the status quo. Now at a crossroads, will they choose reform or repudiation?

The wave of ill-advised school shutdowns last year compelled tens of thousands of parents to rethink their children’s education. When the classroom was virtually forced into their homes via Zoom, parents realized just how abysmal the curricula and tutelage were.

Thanksgiving plays an important role in Americans’ views of ourselves and our heritage. The mere fact that it is time off from work and school cannot by itself explain how many travel to be with those they care about to celebrate. But our understanding does not extend very deep, because the Pilgrims started from a communal or communist system, and only moved to a private property-rights based system that many, even in this woke time, now celebrate, because they were starving.