Are We Alone? Cosmic Loneliness and the Longing to Believe (with Adam Kirsch)

People conspire all the time. Firms collude. Politicians bargain behind closed doors. Militaries deceive their enemies. But other conspiracies are detected, or they do not last long. Why do some remain secret while others are revealed? A simple game theory model can help illustrate that the probability of a conspiracy being revealed depends on the… MORE

I. Atlas Shrugged in Brazil In 1988, when I was 27 years old, I read Ayn Rand for the first time. It was her novel Atlas Shrugged, in its just-released Portuguese edition. At that time, I already considered myself a sort of classical liberal, but my superficial knowledge of political philosophy, among many other gaps… MORE

What if the Industrial Revolution wasn’t sparked by the steam engine, but by a quiet legal revolution in how England handled property rights? Ben Southwood of Works in Progress argues that the Glorious Revolution of the 1680s unleashed British growth by empowering a Parliament composed of landowners who simplified their own tangled, inefficient property rights.… MORE

Economists nearly unanimously support open and free trade among nations.1 The arguments for free trade are not new, dating back at least to Adam Smith’s famous book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776 and David Hume’s series of essays, On Commerce and On the Balance of Trade… MORE

President Donald Trump tells us we are “getting killed on trade”1 and stresses the country’s trade deficit. As a piece of language, however, “trade deficit” is almost as misleading as “getting killed on trade.” “Deficit,” like “getting killed,” has a negative valence, but it is phony. In a trade, one thing—a good or service—is exchanged… MORE

“The wealth, freedom, and diverse experiences of a commercial culture liberate artists and educators both to be more creative and to cater to the demands of the general population.” The typical economic argument for free trade focuses on the increased material prosperity that trade creates for nearly everyone. While this argument is powerful and backed… MORE

Gary Becker (1930-2014) was one of the most original and pathbreaking economists of modern times. His 1992 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences was described as his “having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behavior.” Becker’s early work on discrimination led to his further work… MORE

Recognized as one of the most influential voices in the areas of market structure, the theory of the firm, law and economics, resource unemployment, and monetary theory and policy, in this 2001 interview, Armen Alchian (1914-2013) outlines the “UCLA tradition” of economics which he founded and explores the many unanticipated consequences of self-seeking individual behavior.… MORE

Anthony de Jasay, a regular columnist for Econlib, was one of the most original and independent thinkers on the relationship between the individual and the state. Through his published works, he challenged the reigning paradigms justifying modern democratic growth. His deeply challenging theoretical works include The State, an analysis that views the state as acting… MORE

  Henry George is best remembered as a proponent of the “single tax” on land. The government should finance all of its projects, he argued, with proceeds from only one tax. This single tax would be on the unimproved value of land—the value that the land would have if it were in its natural state… MORE

A tariff is a fancy word for a tax. The term usually refers to import duties, which are fees levied on goods entering one country from another. Import tariffs have been a controversial feature of domestic politics, international diplomacy, and economic policy for centuries. This article covers some of the basic economics of tariffs as… MORE

Joseph Schumpeter described Bastiat nearly a century after his death as “the most brilliant economic journalist who ever lived.” Orphaned at the age of nine, Bastiat tried his hand at commerce, farming, and insurance sales. In 1825, after he inherited his grandfather’s estate, he quit working, established a discussion group, and read widely in economics.… MORE