Free Markets

Charles Dickens trained many to hate capitalism, but he never understood the difference between envious hatred of wealth and charitable concern for the poor. The true story of his personal life makes this evident.

Consumer spending does not drive the economy. On the contrary, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship are the critical components of economic growth.

Losing one’s money, credit cards, and passports in a New York City cab could have been a disaster. Thanks to trust and cooperation among people who didn’t know each other, this story had a happy ending.

“Equality imposed by force,” Chrysostom insists, “would achieve nothing, and do much harm.”

American journalists and academics have invented a fairy tale in which “free market orthodoxy” has dominated political thinking in America for the past forty years. This is not even slightly true, but pundits repeat the lie again and again.

Libertarianism and free markets depend upon peace. Murray Rothbard believed that war destroys freedom and free exchange, so keeping the peace is vitally important.

Connor O’Keeffe explains why the New Right’s economic populists have adopted a progressive myth of “laissez-faire gone wrong,” and instead shows how a century of inflation, bailouts, regulation, and managed trade has rigged the system against younger Americans.

The story of how the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock abandoned the common labor system and embraced private ownership is well known. While at first it affected a small community, William Bradford’s decision in favor of private enterprise would have a wide ranging effect.

A satirical essay from a 1978 classroom, speculating about what it would cost to become Santa.

The first English settlers in America learned a hard lesson about socialist economics in the early years of their new colonies as they faced starvation. Once they embraced free enterprise, however, they had something to be thankful for.