Featured Post

Featured Post

Most New Ideas Are Terrible

By Kevin Corcoran | Mar 27 2024
I’m something of a tech nerd – I enjoy new gadgets and technology more than the average person. As a result, I keep up with the latest news and rumors in the gadget and gizmo space. I also follow the work of various tech reviewers and bloggers. One such person, Michael Fischer (aka “MrMobile”) posted ...

More 3 Comments

Related Post

Simple Economic Ideas About Choice

By Pierre Lemieux | Mar 25 2024

Suppose an adult—call him Tom—faces a choice between two alternatives, A and B. Alternative B (mnemonic: B for “best”) is the one he prefers and will choose if left free. If you coercively forbid him to do B, forcing him to choose A instead, are you rendering him a service? Will he thank you for .. MORE

Featured Comment

The reason there has been no recession so far is because money supply was increased excessively, not because the Fed successfully avoided an economic overheat through rate hikes. Their rate hikes have merely reduced demand,..

billy, March 28

Most Recent

Economics and Culture

You Are What You Eat: Science or Propaganda?

By Walter Donway | Mar 28, 2024 | 1

Earlier this week, I described a new Netflix documentary purporting to compare the benefits of healthy omnivore versus vegan diets. In that post, I questioned the adherence of the series to the scientific study it’s describes as being based on, and I asked, “Who \ordered this banquet?” Well, funding for You Are What You Eat .. MORE

Economic and Political Philosophy

Governing and the Rule of Law

By Pierre Lemieux | Mar 28, 2024 | 15

It is not because a law has been democratically and duly adopted that it necessarily exemplifies the rule of law. It is not because democratically elected politicians govern that governing is good. One current example is given by the US and EU governments siding against Apple and in favor of its developers (outside suppliers) and .. MORE

Obituaries

Daniel Kahneman RIP

By David Henderson | Mar 27, 2024 | 1

Daniel Kahneman, co-winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics, along with Vernon Smith, died today. Here’s his obit in the Washington Post. Here’s his bio in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Here’s an excerpt from the bio: One bias they [Kahneman and Tversky] found is that people tend to believe in “the law of .. MORE

Fiscal Policy

Higher Taxes or Lower Benefits?

By Scott Sumner | Mar 27, 2024 | 19

There’s a debate over whether to save Social Security with higher taxes or lower benefits. Matt Yglesias suggests a mix of the two approaches: Let’s consider two methods, starting with an all tax approach: 1. Increase the payroll tax by 1%, from 15.3% to 16.3%, and add a $1,000 tax on affluent seniors Now consider .. MORE

Business Economics

Most New Ideas Are Terrible

By Kevin Corcoran | Mar 27, 2024 | 3

I’m something of a tech nerd – I enjoy new gadgets and technology more than the average person. As a result, I keep up with the latest news and rumors in the gadget and gizmo space. I also follow the work of various tech reviewers and bloggers. One such person, Michael Fischer (aka “MrMobile”) posted .. MORE

Economics and Culture

This is a Documentary, Right?!?!?

By Walter Donway | Mar 26, 2024 | 14

If I hesitate to criticize the new Netflix hit, You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, as bait-and-switch propaganda—exploitation of audience trust in “science”—it is only because…well, what’s new?  Aren’t most “science” documentaries riding some hobby horse?  Attacks on virtually all companies in the natural resources field?  Attacks on “big” anything—except, of course, government? .. MORE

View More

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.

Browse Articles

CONTRIBUTORS

Bloggers David Henderson, Alberto Mingardi, Scott Sumner, Pierre Lemieux, Kevin Corcoran, and guests write on topical economics of interest to them, illuminating subjects from politics and finance, to recent films and cultural observations, to history and literature.

A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P Q R S T V W
Browse our archive of posts by author last name

Book Club

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Schooling is Mostly Signaling 25

Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education lays out a strong argument that the financial returns to schooling–which have been increasing dramatically, year after year–are about 80% returns to signaling rather than returns to actual skill-building. In their new book, Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education, Georgetown University philosopher Jason Brennan .. MORE

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

From the Fourth Millennium, A Tale for Libertarians 38

In 3024, the world was divided into many different societies. Most of them had a minimal state inspired by the ideas of 20th-century economists and political philosophers, notably Anthony de Jasay’s “capitalist state.” The mission of such a state was to ensure that it would not be replaced by a state intent on “governing,” (that .. MORE

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

My Weekly Reading for March 24, 2024 4

Here are some highlights of my weekly reading. How FDR Made Republican Isolationists Look Silly with a Simple Rhyme by Charles Sykes, Politico, March 20, 2024. Excerpt: In the speech, Roosevelt deployed the full force of his rhetorical talents against three leading Republican isolationist leaders: Mass. Rep. Joseph Martin, the House minority leader; N.Y. Rep. .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

America’s Animal Spirits

By Samuel Gregg

A Book Review of Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street, by Jackson Lears.1 When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the young American republic in the early 1830s, he immediately noticed a deep restlessness which characterized the Americans that he encountered. In the America witnessed by Tocqueville, … a man .. MORE

What Makes Capitalism Tick?

By Arnold Kling

Understanding the market process as a systematic, error-corrective sequence of profit-inspired entrepreneurial discoveries, continually reshuffled and redirected as a result of the ceaseless impact of exogenous changes, should drastically alter our appreciation of key features of capitalism. —Israel M. Kirzner, Competition, Economic Planning, and the Knowledge Problem1 (page 301) This volume of the collected works .. MORE

Why Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better: A Swiftian Perspective

By Richard Gunderman

Jonathan Swift Healthcare in the United States is in the midst of a massive wave of consolidation. For example, fifty years ago, virtually all non-academic, non-government U.S. physicians had an ownership interest in their practices. Today, approximately 70% of U.S. physicians are employed by hospitals or other corporate entities. Likewise, mergers and acquisitions have landed .. MORE

Of Kings, Keynes, and Capitalism

By Alberto Mingardi

Review of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, by Zachary D. Carter.1 Why should someone write another biography of Keynes? Major biographies of John Maynard Keynes (not merely books on Keynes and Keynesianism, of which the supply is far larger) include the 1951 Life of John Maynard Keynes .. MORE