Free Markets
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Don’t Scapegoat Business for Mask Mandates
“Brutalist methods will not rebuild social peace. This is not a call to accept mandates, but such mandates can be opposed without blaming the small business owners who are victimized just as much as we are.” ~ Barry Brownstein
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The Academy’s Monopoly on the Truth Is Crumbling
“Just like in markets, truly revolutionary technologies never destroy the old order–they usually accomplish more through adoption, changing established players from within. Goodacre’s efforts, especially as a hub where traditional academic insiders and outsiders met, teaches us much about how new technology changes old institutions. More academics should learn the lesson.” ~ Max Gulker
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What’s the Right Mix of Money and Drugs for Your Employees?
“There isn’t a ‘right’ combination of wages, benefits, and other perquisites, and the pattern of things that ‘work’ for people is not planned by a central authority. It emerges from trial and error in the market.” ~ Art Carden
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NASA is Paying for Moon Rocks. The Implications for Space Commerce are Huge
“In ancient times, mankind extended the division of labor across tribes, turning enemies into friends. Later came trade across national boundaries, with similar largely peaceful effects. Now, humans are prepared to extend it still further: into the final frontier. Doux commerce is coming to the stars. NASA just made a ‘giant leap for mankind.’ Everyone…
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Disaggregating Keynes Demonstrates Macro Delusions
“Which view of man prevails – man seen as a reasonable but imperfect person who can guide and direct his own life, or man seen as an irrational being constantly needing someone else to direct and dictate how and what he does – will determine the future for mankind, not only out of the current…
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Why Do Basketball Players Make More Than Teachers?
“As an educator myself, I am happy to grant that teachers produce value for students, and for society. But even the most marginal teacher, at the worst and least motivated public school, can’t-wait-for-retirement clock puncher, makes far more than the marginal basketball player. You can’t compare the marginal unit of water, or teachers, with diamonds.”…
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Citibank’s $900 Million Mistake and the Finality of Payments
“Cases like Citbank’s $900 million mispayment and $846,000 bank drafts stuck in financial limbo make for interesting stories. But keep in mind that the participants in these transactions are the accidental victims of a payments system that provides hard finality. What is unseen is the huge amount of trade that the certainty of hard finality…
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The Resilience and Brilliance of the World’s Poorest: The Case of Pagpag
“The problem isn’t that the world’s poorest don’t work hard. The problem is that they work hard in societies where restrictions on economic freedom throttle growth.” ~ Art Carden
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Assar Lindbeck – Sweden’s Greatest Economist Died 90 Years Old
“Lindbeck was a great economist and public voice of economic sanity. He will be sorely missed.” ~ Joakim Book
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Celebrate Entrepreneurs, Don’t Guillotine Them
“The key to getting wealthy in a capitalistic society is to produce something so valuable that millions of people want to trade for it.” ~ Raymond C. Niles
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Where Does Money Come From?
“Money makes possible an incredible amount of interpersonal coordination in the market. Rules of private property and contract, of various kinds, predate money. But widespread market integration and economic growth only result when there is a critical mass of people in a single commercial network linked by money.” ~ Alexander W. Salter
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What Raised the S&P 500 Price-Earnings Ratio?
“For those who find stock price gains inexplicable and therefore terrifying, the Yardeni-Reynolds Model offers a purely empirical explanation of a seemingly high trailing P/E ratio – extremely low global inflation and bond yields combined with an artificially low P/E denominator of past earnings that includes the terrible second quarter of 2020.” ~ Alan Reynolds
