Free Markets

  • 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
  • Beware the Friend/Enemy Binary of Politics

    Markets require that people play nice. Give these same people a forum in which to argue politics and they become barbaric. Why is that?

    Beware the Friend/Enemy Binary of Politics
  • The Solution to City Transit Is Decentralized

    The rise of the city scooter as part of the app economy is a fantastic example of how markets generate solutions in the face of intractable problems. The more people tool around on these wonderful scooters, the lighter the traffic, the cleaner the city, and the happier people are. Note that no central planner came…

    The Solution to City Transit Is Decentralized
  • Five Reasons the Future Isn’t Here Yet

    The interactions and feedback loops between invention, implementation, and full-on adoption is a fascinating process to watch. It can’t be gamed. It relies on something no one can control: the price system, human choice, resource tradeoffs, and case-by-case circumstances of time and place.

    Five Reasons the Future Isn’t Here Yet
  • The Miracle of Canned Tuna Salad

    Here is what is so amazing. It all happens without any central direction from the top down. In fact, we can go further to say that it could not happen under central direction. No government bureaucrat made this possible. They only get in the way. You need owners, marketers, manufacturers, prices, markets, banks, millions of…

    The Miracle of Canned Tuna Salad
  • American Pianos Vanished but the Music Didn’t Die

    The years between 1890 and the Second World War were the golden age of the American piano. Pianos were the biggest-ticket item on every household budget besides the house itself. Everyone had to have one. Those who didn’t have one aspired to have one. It was a prize, an essential part of life, and they…

    American Pianos Vanished but the Music Didn’t Die
  • Kant was a Friend of Classical Liberalism

    Individual freedom plays a central role in Immanuel Kant’s moral and political philosophy. He writes, “Freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice, insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law, is the only original right belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity.” Kant’s…

    Kant was a Friend of Classical Liberalism
  • Overcoming a Catch-22 on the Path to Greater Liberty

    As our society grows ever more complex and technologically advanced, controlling it from the top down is increasingly like herding cats. Attempts at more top-down control, though well-intentioned, won’t work. Rethinking governance itself is an even more challenging path, but offers a multitude of reasons for hope.

    Overcoming a Catch-22 on the Path to Greater Liberty
  • China’s Communism That Is Not

    Even as the US is pulling inward, demonizing foreign nations, calling everyone in the world a cheater, China is aggressively opening to the world, negotiating bilateral trade pacts with every nation it can and another 14 multilateral trade pacts. More goods and investment coming and going – this seems to be the Chinese credo. It…

    China’s Communism That Is Not
  • Facebook Hearings Reveal How Government Regulations Work

    Right now, Facebook faces massive competition from other platforms in social media, copycats, and alternative uses of people’s time. In some ways, it’s the best possible moment to call on government to institutionalize Facebook as a form of public utility. That might actually be the end game that Zuckerberg has in mind. Then the politicians…

    Facebook Hearings Reveal How Government Regulations Work