Voluntary Exchange Sources

15 Dec Opponents of Liberty Remain Misguided Sore Winners

Posted at 11:39h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

The 2020 presidential election has been the most divisive in many people’s living memory. Not only has there been the anger and fury over whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden should occupy the White House come January 20, 2021, there have been concerns and controversy...

15 Dec Brilliant Essay on Covid Derangement Syndrome

Posted at 11:39h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

(Don Boudreaux) TweetFrom Ivor Cummins, I learned just this morning of this powerful and insightful essay, written back in September, by Manfred Horst. Please do read the whole thing carefully; here, as teasers, are some slices: Perhaps we should consider it a privilege to live one...

14 Dec Tyranny During Its Reign Is Unrecognized by Its Victims

Posted at 13:18h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

How does tyranny arrive and survive? A juvenile answer is that devilish persons somehow seize the levers of power while the nation’s people are innocently going about their business. Wearing sinister smiles and twirling the tips of their moustaches in dastardly fashion, the tyrants unilaterally impose...

13 Dec Costs Must Be Weighed Against Benefits: The Economics of Dealing with Pandemics

Posted at 21:02h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

One of the first lessons in an economics class is every action has a cost. That is in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians virtually ignore cost and talk about benefits and free stuff. If we look only at the benefits...

13 Dec More 2020 Insanity

Posted at 21:02h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

(Don Boudreaux) TweetBelow is a letter to WTOP radio. (Every cent that Karol and I spent to keep our son out of Fairfax County’s government schools by sending him to a private school was worth it.) Sir or Madam: With its teachers resisting the in-person reopening of...

13 Dec Confusing Free Market Capitalism with the Corrupt Interventionist State

Posted at 20:56h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

When most people put on their “reality” hats about politics, there are few among them who do not cynically see the power-lusting, the corruption, and the hypocrisy in most of what is said and done by those running for or sitting in political office. A...

11 Dec The “Expert Consensus” Also Favored Alcohol Prohibition

Posted at 12:46h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

Most people today regard America’s experiment with alcohol prohibition as a national embarrassment, rightly repealed in 1933. So it will be with the closures and lockdowns of 2020, someday. In 1920, however, to be for the repeal of the prohibition that was passed took courage. You...

11 Dec Why Hayek was Right About Nazis Being Socialists

Posted at 12:44h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

Words are powerful things in that they enable us to share a common world of understanding with our contemporaries and, in the written form, with generations long past. But too often words can just as easily cause confusion, misunderstanding, and conflict among people in any...

11 Dec Zoom’s Success Story is Inconvenient for the ‘Break up Big Tech’ Crowd

Posted at 12:43h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

Proponents of an antitrust war on Big Tech abandoned the traditional consumer harm test in part because it was hard to prove the giant platforms had actually raised prices or otherwise directly hurt consumers. Now, the runaway success of video conferencing app Zoom raises questions...

11 Dec Colonialism Doesn’t Explain the Developing World’s Problems

Posted at 12:42h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

There is an abundance of studies postulating that colonialism explains the character of the developing world. For instance, in their seminal paper aptly titled "The Colonial Origins of Development: An Empirical Investigation" (2000), Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson advance the audacious claim that in regions...