Voluntary Exchange Sources

What makes somebody “essential?” Governmental and societal responses to Covid-19 have revolved around classifying certain types of human behavior and individuals themselves as “essential” or “nonessential.” But what is the meaning of this distinction?  Essential to whom? Essential to what end? Who has the ability to...

The Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Yousif Almoayyed. Recorded at the Mises Institute on March 19, 2021. Includes an introduction by Peter G. Klein. The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian School, bringing together leading scholars doing research in...

(Don Boudreaux) Tweet…is from page xiv of University of Notre Dame philosopher James Otteson’s excellent and hot-off-the-Cambridge-University-Press book, Seven Deadly Economic Sins (2021): But one of the primary intellectual virtues is to know the limits of one’s knowledge, and to proportion one’s beliefs (and the strength of...

(Don Boudreaux) TweetDavid Henderson relates his encounter with a homo avoidcovidous. James Jeffrey argues that the tyranny that is engulfing Great Britain is more like that envisioned by Aldous Huxley than by George Orwell. Here’s his opening: Having the jackboot of George Orwell’s 1984 stamping on one’s...

(Don Boudreaux) TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: I wish that I didn’t share Daniel Henninger’s pessimism about the course of American politics (“Biden Abandons Normalcy,” March 18). But all that he writes rings regrettably true. As Mr. Henninger accurately observes, today’s progressives repeatedly prophesy...

(Don Boudreaux) Tweet… is from page 558 of the final (2016) volume – Bourgeois Equality – of Deirdre McCloskey’s soaring trilogy on the essence of bourgeois values, on their transmission, and on their essential role in modern life: True, trading tends to be prudent, and on...