Recent Podcast Episodes

Mark Thornton

Opportunity cost is the proper economic basis for specialization and trade in resources. Opportunity cost is the highest value you give up when you make a choice. It was Confederate government policy that caused misallocations on the part of the South, making it inefficient and wasteful. A few of those bad policies were: drafting soldiers, confiscating resources, and monetary inflation.

 

Mark Thornton

The Economics of the Civil War should instruct us in ways that the history of the Civil War might not. Cotton had much to do with what the war was about. Slavery as a cause of the Civil War is a modern development. How did the Union win the war? How did the aftermath of the war affect our own lives? What lessons can benefit us?