Free Markets

  • How Countries Can Avoid the Middle-Income Trap

    To get out of the middle-income trap, the country must change from the imitative economy to an innovative economy. Instead of a top-down transformation, the economy needs to blossom from below.

    How Countries Can Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
  • Predatory Pricing: More Theory Than Reality

    All governments and all courts everywhere would, if they were sincerely committed to keeping markets as competitive as possible, announce loudly and unconditionally that never again will they take accusations of predatory pricing seriously.

    Predatory Pricing: More Theory Than Reality
  • When “Democracy” Becomes a Threat to Liberty

    Friends of freedom, including many of those who strongly believed in and fought for representative and democratically elected government in the 18th and 19th centuries, often expressed fearful concerns that “democracy” could, itself, become a threat to the liberty of many of the very people that democratic government was supposed to protect from political abuse.

    When “Democracy” Becomes a Threat to Liberty
  • The Philosophical Reason for the Attacks on Free Speech

    In the old days, people associated the Left with an ethos akin to the ACLU today: the right to speak, publish, and associate. The turn that took place with the New Left actually flipped whatever remaining attachment that the old left had with freedom.

    The Philosophical Reason for the Attacks on Free Speech
  • High Regulation Causes Unwarranted Consolidation

    If we are concerned about the rise of the ginormous corporation, and perhaps we should be, why not start with lowering barriers to entry, removing regulations, cutting more taxes, blasting away expensive mandates and litigation landmines? If we work toward a truly laissez-faire environment for business, we could let the market discover the right combination…

    High Regulation Causes Unwarranted Consolidation
  • Big Data and Central Planning

    Does the rise of big data make Marx’s centrally planned utopia feasible? The answer is a big no.

    Big Data and Central Planning
  • What Anthony Bourdain Taught Me About Economics

    “As Bourdain himself says at the outset, with the focus on food and cooking, we can see what it is that drives daily life among the Haitian multitudes. He takes viewers to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Through this micro lens, we gain more insight than we would have if the program were entirely focused on economic issues.”…

    What Anthony Bourdain Taught Me About Economics
  • Freedom, Love, and the Vision of Edith Wharton

    Wharton was the mind that gave the most rich and complex expression of the glory and failings of this fascinating time and place. She clearly loved freedom, and despised impositions on the human personality, which is why she was one of the few literary giants of her time to see the power of Aldous Huxley’s…

    Freedom, Love, and the Vision of Edith Wharton
  • Swift vs. Sweep: The Eternal Battle

    There’s something about the physical experience of a spot like Cotswold Cottage at the American Institute for Economic Research that connects you to the deep past, in all its tribulations and struggle for progress, but also points to a brilliant future. Sometimes we need experiences like this to cause reflection of where we’ve been and…

    Swift vs. Sweep: The Eternal Battle
  • How Instant Coffee Became Wonderful

    The hotel room in Sydney, Australia, didn’t have a coffee pot. But there was a water heater and some packages of instant coffee. Blech, right? That’s what I remember from the old days, meaning some uncertain point in the past. But desperation forced experimentation. I heated the water, poured the packet of Moccona “Indulgence” in…

    How Instant Coffee Became Wonderful
  • With Scratch-and-Sniff Stamps, the Post Office Updates Itself to the 1970s

    The post offices of the world are like the last of the dinosaurs roaming the earth long after evolution selected against their existence.

    With Scratch-and-Sniff Stamps, the Post Office Updates Itself to the 1970s
  • The Sock Slider, It Turns Out, Is a Godsend

    As it turns out, many people have needs that cannot be appreciated or discerned in advance by intellectuals. Many times, they cannot even understand them. This has been obvious since the late 19th century, when the socialist critique of the capitalist market underwent a huge shift. The Marxists had predicted that capitalism would impoverish the…

    The Sock Slider, It Turns Out, Is a Godsend