The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Competition, Methodology, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 3rd, 2012
One of the towering figures (literally too!) of 20th century public intellectuals was John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1958 he made a huge splash with his book The Affluent Society which was a criticism of resource depletion, inequality and consumerism, among other ideas. It is actually quite an enjoyable read, I do recommend it. One of [...]
Posted in Competition, Education on Feb 21st, 2012
In the long run, the clear winners from competitive market processes operating reasonably well are consumers. One need look no further than what it costs to obtain the most basic goods and services today as compared to even a generation ago. For example, the laptop I am writing this on has 4GB of RAM, 700 [...]
Posted in Competition on Jan 19th, 2012
Kodak has filed for bankruptcy protection and reorganization. Read the AP News Story here. Here is a probably very little-known fact about the company buried down in the article: In 1975, engineer Steven Sasson created the first digital camera, a toaster-size prototype capturing black-and-white images at a resolution of 0.1 megapixels. Class starts in a [...]
Posted in Central Planning, Competition on Nov 14th, 2011
It’s 87,576 to nothing. What am I talking about? Well, there are 87,576 governmental jurisdictions in the United States – well, at least there were when the 2o02 Census of Governments was conducted. And what does the score mean? How many of them do you think are truly “free enterprise” zones? How many of them [...]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Competition, Entrepreneurs, Environment on Oct 10th, 2011
Abraham Gesner’s New York Kerosene company, in 1856, began to make kerosene for the purposes of illumination. When it brought that product to market, it did not advertise itself as, “having the potential to save the whales,” though indeed that was its effect. When it did the research on this fuel, it was not the [...]
Posted in Competition, Extended Order, Voluntary Society, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Sep 9th, 2011
The beginning of every academic year brings me great joy. Not only do I get to meet lots of new interesting and bright people, but I have never failed to be introduced to a new way of thinking, a new idea, a new outlook on something I have seen in only one light for a [...]
Posted in Competition, Economic Illiteracy on Jul 19th, 2011
Suppose you run a business of your own. Maybe you make beautiful Adirondack Guide Boats. Now these boats are gorgeous and extremely well crafted. A simple model will run you about $5,000. You can get them rigged up with a mast and sail and some other goodies and probably have it run up to about [...]
Posted in Competition on Jun 19th, 2011
Vance Fried has a new study out at Cato. Here is the executive summary: Undergraduate education is a highly profitable business for nonprofit colleges and universities. They do not show profits on their books, but instead take their profits in the form of spending on some combination of research, graduate education, low-demand majors, low faculty teaching loads, excess [...]
Posted in Competition, Government Thuggery on Jun 3rd, 2011
Via Coyote, the whole article has to be supplied. Look at the last sentence too: For a few years, Mike Haege’s sister lived in north Minneapolis. He knows the neighborhood at least a little bit, and when a tornado tore through the area on Sunday, May 22, he took notice. On the news he saw [...]
Posted in Competition, Health Care on May 16th, 2011
A little over a hundred years ago a considerable number of the mutual aid societies began to offer medical care to their members. The way they did this was to hire a doctor on salary, and he would then provide basic medical services to all of the members of the order. As David Beito tells [...]
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