Doug French
January 26, 2012

Back in 1997 Gregory Bresiger penned a piece for the Free Market tearing apart the notion of "socially responsible investing" (SRI). Managers focused on social issues instead of profits will perform poorly as resources are diverted to unproductive uses. Bresiger looked to close the argument with this seemingly absurd proposition:
But SRI funds do point the way to solving a myriad of political debates in this country. Whenever a politician suggests a new tax, mandate, or regulation on business, let's first try it out on one of these "Socially Responsible" companies, purely on a voluntary basis. Let it pay higher taxes, insurance premiums, and wages, while adopting ever more rigid quotas and union rules. Then we can watch what happens to its stock price relative to everyone else's. Any takers?

Jerry Taylor
January 18, 2012

In free-market economies, decisions about whether to invest in a technology or an industry are made by market actors with private capital. The promise of profit induces investment in promising ventures and the sting of loss penalizes those investments that turn out to be misguided. Of course, we live in a mixed economy in which government frequently assumes tasks that were once left to private individuals and corporations. Whether the government should invest in green energy suggests two questions. Are major green energy investments worthwhile in the first place? And should the Obama administration be spending $80 billion in grants and loans to make these investments on our collective behalf?

Ben O'Neill
January 17, 2012

The idea of a society where people are free to "do their own thing" is an appealing one. It is implicit in the slogan "live and let live," which has been adopted by many libertarian groups, and it is also an idea that was central to the Marxist idea of liberation from the alienation of labor under capitalism (which is merely a natural result of the division of labor).[1]

This fuzzy notion, roughly understood, has been a central pillar of many opposing ideological visions of society for many centuries, and has often received explicit recognition, in some form, in political ideologies appearing since the advent of classical liberalism. Various competing political ideologies have crafted their advocacy in terms of their desire to see people being able to live as they please, even when they have had radically different notions of what this would entail.
But in considering this freedom to do one's own thing, we must consider exactly what we are to be free from. Are we to be free from coercion by others — from violent interference with our bodies and our property? Are we to be free from being physically restrained or molested when we try to "do our own thing"? Or are we to be free from the adverse consequences of our actions? Even from adverse judgments by others?

by Gary North
January 12, 2012

There are two deficits that we hear about most: the federal government's deficit and the balance of payments of the United States. They are linked, but they are very different in their effects.
The federal deficit is seen by Keynesians as mostly a benefit and by Austrians as mostly a liability, and for the same reason: higher government spending.
The balance-of-payments deficit is seen by virtually all economists as a benefit for Americans and their creditors. Otherwise, the exchanges would not take place.
At some point, the twin deficits will become unsustainable. Then the debtors will have a choice: either default or else adopt a systematic reversal of policies: debt repayment. This means a federal-budget surplus and a balance-of-payments surplus. Balanced budgets won't do it. There will have to be surpluses.
That day is coming. That will be the day of reckoning — of counting up. The participants give no indications that they believe that day is coming. Neither did Greece's politicians in early 2010.

The crisis and the blogosphere have opened mainstream economics up to new attack

POINT UDALL on St Croix, one of the US Virgin Islands, is a far-flung, wind-whipped spot. You cannot travel farther east without leaving the United States. Visitors can pose next to a stone sundial commemorating America’s first dawn of the third millennium. A couple named “Sigi + Ricky” have added a memento of their own, an arrowstruck heart scrawled on the perimeter wall in memory of “us”.
Warren Mosler, an innovative carmaker, a successful bond-investor and an idiosyncratic economist, moved to St Croix in 2003 to take advantage of a hospitable tax code and clement weather. From his perch on America’s periphery, Mr Mosler champions a doctrine on the edge of economics: neo-chartalism, sometimes called “Modern Monetary Theory”. The neo-chartalists believe that because paper currency is a creature of the state, governments enjoy more financial freedom than they recognise. The fiscal authorities are free to spend whatever is required to revive their economies and restore employment. They can spend without first collecting taxes; they can borrow without fear of default. Budget-makers need not cower before the bond-market vigilantes. In fact, they need not bother with bond markets at all.

The neo-chartalists are not the only people telling governments mired in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that they could make things better if they would shed old inhibitions. “Market monetarists” favour more audacity in the monetary realm. Tight money caused America’s Great Recession, they argue, and easy money can end it. They do not think the federal government can or should rescue the economy, because they believe the Federal Reserve can.

by Mark R. Crovelli
January 6, 2012

Imagine for a moment that you are omniscient. Endowed with such knowledge, you would completely understand how the world "works." You would completely understand how light works, how molecules and atoms work, how genetics work, how tectonic plates work, and how the universe came into existence. There would be nothing about the social or natural worlds that you would not understand in its entirety.
Were you endowed with such omniscience, you would have no use whatsoever for "science." You would have no need to study the world in a patient and systematic way, because you would already possess all the knowledge about the world that "science" could ever hope to yield. Science would not only bore you to tears; it would appear to be an imperfect and dreadfully tedious means to arrive at the knowledge you already possess.

D.W. MacKenzie

Political Scientist and MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry has called for renewed faith in democracy. According to Harris-Perry, recent events have damaged public confidence in the democratic process.
Our faith has been badly damaged by governors who crush unions, by a Congress that will not govern, by a military that tortures, … by CEOs who slash jobs as profits rise, by a system that seems irreparably broken. But building a country requires investment in one another, hope that we can be better tomorrow than we are today and faith that our failures are not definitive. In these final days before we enter the 2012 election year, it is time to ask, "Do you believe?"

Roman Skaskiw

Introduction

Although European libertarians continue to produce great works of theory and activism, the United States has been, and seems to remain, the epicenter of the libertarian movement. There are no prominent protests in Europe calling for less governmental help as there are in the United States. Murray Rothbard's essay "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" refers to the United States as "the great home of radical liberalism."[1] In 1996, Dr. Yuri Maltsev presented a lecture at a Ludwig von Mises Institute summit entitled "Why America Must Be Saved," making the case for the United States as the greatest hope in the struggle for freedom.[2] Writing favorably of the tea-party movement, Peruvian writer and recent Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa distinguished the American individualist tradition as stronger than the European one:
In the United States … individualism has never had the bad press it had in Europe.… In the purest American tradition, it is not the state but the citizen who is first responsible for failure or success.[3]

by Ludwig M. Lachmann on November 30, 2011
[On Freedom and Free Enterprise: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises (1956)]

Everywhere today in the free world we find the opponents of the market economy at a loss for plausible arguments. Of late the "case for central planning" has shed much of its erstwhile luster. We have had too much experience of it. The facts of the last 40 years are too eloquent.

by Peter G. Klein on November 25, 2011

While Schumpeter, Kirzner, Cantillon, Knight, and Mises are frequently cited in the contemporary entrepreneurship literature in economics and management, much of this literature takes, implicitly, an occupational or structural approach to entrepreneurship. Any relationship to the classic functional contributions is inspirational, not substantive.