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Nature’s Breaking Point
Nature’s Breaking Point Photo by Karl-Ludwig Poggemann | CC BY 2.0 Ever wonder how the classical philosophers/economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo would view today’s credo of infinite economic growth, forever more, above and beyond yesteryear. Well, in a word, they would be horrified. Ricardo, similar to the father of capitalism Adam Smith, believed […]
The Limits of Free Markets, Both Economic and Intellectual
The Limits of Free Markets, Both Economic and Intellectual Both in economics and speech, the market is a powerful metaphor. Free economic markets are efficient, and produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people by the fair interplay of sellers and buyers. The marketplace of ideas is supposed to produce truth, and maximize […]
Oops! The economy is like a self-driving car
Oops! The economy is like a self-driving car Back in 1776, Adam Smith talked about the “invisible hand” of the economy. Investopediaexplains how the invisible hand works as, “In a free market economy, self-interested individuals operate through a system of mutual interdependence to promote the general benefit of society at large.” We talk and act today as […]
Governments Create Monopolies and Cause Worker Exploitation, Not Free Markets
GOVERNMENTS CREATE MONOPOLIES AND CAUSE WORKER EXPLOITATION, NOT FREE MARKETS The world is threatened with a renewed wave of anti-capitalism and anti-business sentiments and policies. Many who cheered the demise of Soviet communism in the early 1990s, presumed that this meant that, by default, the case for free markets and competitive enterprise had won in […]
Monopoly’s New Era
Monopoly’s New Era NEW YORK – For 200 years, there have been two schools of thought about what determines the distribution of income – and how the economy functions. One, emanating from Adam Smith and nineteenth-century liberal economists, focuses on competitive markets. The other, cognizant of how Smith’s brand of liberalism leads to rapid concentration […]
Central Bank Money Printing—-The Rotten Philosophy Beneath
Central Bank Money Printing—-The Rotten Philosophy Beneath If advocates of freedom were to make up a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2016, one of the most important items should be ending government’s monopoly control over money. In a free society, people in the marketplace should decide what they wish to use as money, not […]
Chapter 5: Economists and the Banking System, Part 2: Adam Smith, Some Early Americans, and Friedrich List
Chapter 5: Economists and the Banking System, Part 2: Adam Smith, Some Early Americans, and Friedrich List This chapter is about economics in transition. Economics means literally ‘housekeeping’ and most early writers on economics (roughly speaking before Adam Smith, 1723-90) treated it that way. They worried about a nation’s solvency, whether fairness generally prevailed in […]
Fraud, Fools, and Financial Markets
Fraud, Fools, and Financial Markets Adam Smith famously wrote of the “invisible hand,” by which individuals’ pursuit of self-interest in free, competitive markets advances the interest of society as a whole. And Smith was right: Free markets have generated unprecedented prosperity for individuals and societies alike. But, because we can be manipulated or deceived or […]
