David Gordon reviews Binyamin Appelbaum's The Economists' Hour. As a critique of free-market economics, the book fails, relying on appeals to competing values and misattributing government failures to the market.
People (including most mainstream economists) assume that only a government bureaucracy can effectively deal with predicting disasters and alerting people in harm's way. However, this is an area of enterprise that is ripe for free markets.
While many historians claim slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War, they are overlooking the role of tariffs in creating the economic and political divides between North and South before the war began.
The goalposts are continually changing (more like fallacy-hopping), but one would-be goal of tariffs needs to be confronted—tariffs for domestic job protection.
Most people believe that ours is a “free-market” healthcare system, but nothing could be further from the truth. A true market-based system as explained here would be less costly and more oriented to patient care.
Most people believe that ours is a “free-market” healthcare system, but nothing could be further from the truth. A true market-based system as explained here would be less costly and more oriented to patient care.
Daniella Bassi tells the remarkable story of the Arctic fur trade as a real-world case study in stateless order.
Tate Fegley shows how bureaucratic insulation, lack of economic calculation, and political incentives lead to cronyism and inefficiency.
Inflation is a systematic distortion of economic signals.
Tate Fegley explains how the absence of market signals leaves public policing blind to real-world tradeoffs.
