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.
Presented as part of the Mises Institute’s Brown Bag Seminar series on 20 January 2005 in Auburn, Alabama.
The oft-heard tale about the sad plight of labor as versus capital is almost entirely false, writes Thomas Woods, author of a new book on American history.
How much of the spectrum should be privatized? All of it, writes B.K. Marcus. Even the vast "beachfront property" held by the military? Yes, all of it.
Economists of an Austrian bent just can't take off their analytical spectacles, writes Mark Thornton, even when undertaking simple life activities like driving from here to there.
Two books have become almost cult classics among the academic left, and both reveal shocking ignorance of the most elementary level of economic logic. Thomas DiLorenzo explains.
New studies and articles purport to solve the problem of poverty in America, writes George Reisman, but through the same old failed methods.
Why didn't private entrepreneurs finance the moon program in the 1960s? Robert Murphy explains that the financial returns from such a project wouldn’t come close to covering the expenses, which is a market signal.
