Free Markets

Bob interviews Alex Tabarrok, professor of economics at George Mason University and co-author of the popular Marginal Revolution blog.

Even in the heyday of liberalism only a few people had a full grasp of the functioning of the market economy. 

To understand the marketplace, it is not necessary to believe in the existence of a selfish, profit-maximizing human.

The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge.

Under capitalism, the common man was no longer a drudge who had to be satisfied with the crumbs that fell from the tables of the rich.

The price system performs the crucial function of transmitting knowledge throughout the society and thereby eliminates the need for bureaucracy.

The rise of interest in free market economics has come from outside academia and Economics in One Lesson has been a great part of this awareness.

Big firms that dominate the marketplace have never had much of a problem with government regulations that keep new competitors from springing up.

No such thing as a "natural" monopoly has ever existed. In real life, so-called "public utilities" faced frequent competition, so they secured government monopolies to destroy the competition and invented the myths to rationalize their monopoly power.

The growth of statistics, often developed originally for its own sake, ends by multiplying the avenues of government intervention and planning.