Ideas Matter

Keynes's Magic Dipping Ladel

John Maynard Keynes probably didn't mean to supply justification for any road to serfdom. But he did. We're left with a mythology of job creation that only creates phantom jobs -- namely visible jobs contrived from the largess (but corresponding invisible job losses somewhere else). This is what happens when you divert resources from productive uses to less productive uses -- all in the name of "stimulating" the economy.

Milton Friedman Tribute

On the heels of the "If I wanted America to fail..." the narrator offers a restatement of the pencil story originally told by Leonard Reed (and channeled famously by Milton Friedman). Reed's is still a great version.

What are you doing for Milton Friedman's Century?

What's the Labor of a Burger Flipper Worth?

"Living wage" is common parlance these days. And yet if Antony Davies is right, the supply and demand for labor is no different from that self-same law applied in other areas of the economy. You can't legislate away an economic law without distortions. As we've shown here many times, minimum wages actually hurt poor people.

Even if we agreed with Karl Marx that an "unemployed army" of immigrants and other poor people keep the price of low-skill labor low, can't we agree that 4 productive people making $5 per hour (labor market rate) is better for the social order than 2 productive people making $7.50 and 2 people drawing government benefits while doing nothing of value? 

Sweating the Small Stuff (and Other Lessons from Big Advertising)

Rory Sutherland is always a delight to listen to. (Well, by my lights anyway. Value is subjective.) If you've ever been interested in the psychology of advertising -- and if you love liberty, perhaps you should be -- then you could do much worse than Sutherland, one of the top brains at Ogilvy.

What's always fascinating to me is that while a few of us Mises and Hayek lovers are busy trying to learn a few tricks from Madison Ave., Sutherland and Co. are determined to learn a thing or two from the Austrian economists (and the behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman). So what does this cross-pollination yield?

Petty Fascism and Free Speech

A lot of people think they have to pay full attention to the big-picture stuff -- like the national debt, international affairs, or the failure of fed policy. But some of the most egregious affronts to individual freedom happen right next door.

The Institute for Justice is doing a great job of defending people from petty fascism while telling the stories of the victims. If we don't start looking immediately around us, we may miss what's going on in our back yards -- and fail to defend ourselves and our neighbors from the local dictators.

Political Irrationality

Do you realize that most politics and political programs are the products of irrationality? I don't mean that people are crazy -- although that can certainly be true sometimes. What I mean is that -- if people took the time actually to look at the data -- they would not support many of the causes and policies they believe make us better off. Here's the crux of the problem:

Great Depression Myths w/ Michelle Fields

Don't be too distracted by the attractive spokeperson. Michelle Fields knows her stuff. In fact, she includes the best highlights for anyone looking to debunk the myths of the Great Depression. And if you want to find more, look no further than:

Joseph Stiglitz: Nobel Laurels Tarnished

If you're going wear the Nobel Laurels, you'd better know what you're talking about. I don't think Joseph Stiglitz does in this case. And you can only hide behind those fading laurels for so long.

Resources: Channeling Julian Simon

When Julian Simon said we'll never run out of resources, people thought he was crazy. Thomas Malthus had predicted resource depletions and mass starvations back in the 18th century. And this was echoed by the likes of Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome in the 1970s. But the more we began to understand Professor Simon's lessons, the crazier the Malthusians started to sound. And just when we thought we'd put Malthusianism into a grave, it came back -- specter-like -- in different forms. The latest is a fetishistic obsession with recycling.

Milton Friedman: The Marketplace of Ideas v. Government and Experts

Let different beliefs clash in the marketplace of ideas, says Milton Friedman. But the questioner does make an interesting point. We're surrounded by "experts" competing for our opinions. They surround Presidents and their bully pulpits. Congress has CBO scorers. Journalists are clueless and rely on experts from government and from partisans dressed up as experts. The nightly news is composed of talking heads who are either guest experts or hosts appealing to these authorities. The average citizen has to wonder: who is to be believed?