By Michael F. Cannon
Kenneth J. Arrow at Stanford University. Credit: LA Cicero, 11/4/1996. As a health reform discussion lengthens, the probability that someone will cite Kenneth Arrow approaches 1. Close behind is the probability that this person will cite Arrow inaccurately. Arrow sh...
By Gregory Caskey
Note: The names of the Cuban entrepreneurs and their businesses described below have been changed to protect the identities of these individuals. "Don't try to understand this place. We don't understand it either." I heard versions of this refrain repeatedly fro...
By Walter Donway
The year was 1965. I was a college sophomore. My family was middle class—not wealthy, watching the budget—and yet, health care was not a problem. In fact, I never heard my parents discuss it. We had our family physician, and if we needed a specialist, we saw one. Ho...
By Arnold Kling
... the path forward will involve a reconciliation of a commitment to the free market, and its atomization and isolation of individual wants and needs, with the insatiable human desire for some form of collective experience and endeavor... the atomization of daily l...
By D. Eric Schansberg
[caption id="attachment_79185" align="alignnone" width="200"] New Harmony, Indiana[/caption] This year is the 200th anniversary of British industrialist Robert Owen's social experiments at New Harmony, Indiana—a utopian commune on 20,000 acres along the Wab...
By Tyler Cowen
Polities and Economics In the first article of this series, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer's epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I then turned to Homer's treatment of comparative political regimes in the second article. In this final essa...
By Arnold Kling
Experiments consistently reveal that our moral judgments are driven by perceptions of harm. We condemn acts based on how much they seem to victimize someone vulnerable. —Kurt Gray, Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Gr...
By Richard Gunderman
Leo Tolstoy. This article was inspired by a recent Virtual Reading Group on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, led by Richard Gunderman. Learn more about our Virtual Reading Groups at the Online Library of Liberty. Productivity is a measure of efficiency, tending to...
By Tyler Cowen
The Polities of The Odyssey In the previous article, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer's epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I also noted that what most strikes me about The Odyssey is Homer's treatment of comparative political regimes. Looking...
By Walker Wright
Human beings are inherently pro-social creatures. Aristotle went so far as to refer to us as political animals, driven by our nature to create associations that culminate in the broader community of the polis. And our capacity for reciprocity, trust, and cooperation...
By Arnold Kling
... [those] who score high on the authoritarianism scale agree that (italicized words are direct quotes from the scale) our country needs a mighty leader; that the leader should destroy opponents; that people should trust the judgment of the proper authorities, avoi...
By Jordan Ragusa
After every presidential election, including the most recent, the new majority wants to repeal a list of previous regimes' policy enactments. Political observers always look to the next two years, wondering what to expect from the party in power. With the 2024 elect...
By Tyler Cowen
Modeling Homer's World An economic approach to Homer's Odyssey1 is most definitely not about "what Homer really meant." Instead, the economic approach views Homer through a lens that Homer himself probably never entertained, namely a series of relatively simple mod...
By Arnold Kling
It is pretty clear that an economist, like a poet, uses metaphors. They are called 'models.' The market for apartments in New York, says the economist, is 'just like' a curve on a blackboard. No one has so far seen a literal demand curve floating in the sky above Ma...
By Alain Marciano
A Liberty Classics Book Review of What Should Economists Do? by James M. Buchanan.1 In November 1963, James Buchanan--newly president at the 33rd meeting of the Southern Economic Association--gave a stirring and surprising address titled "What Should Economis...
By Carlos Fernando Souto
The ESG agenda (an acronym for Environmental, Social, and Governance) was born at the United Nations and has been amplified by investors and governments year after year, quickly gaining substance and influence. The balance between the drive for profit generation and the...