Author: Guest Author
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Five questions with Mike Pompeo
U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo from Wichita explains his opposition to tax credits for all energy production, the problems with over-regulation of business, and the state of the economic recovery.
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Are you in the top 1%?
Most Americans would be surprised to learn that they are, in fact, in the top one percent of income — when the entire world is considered. It is economic freedom in America that has been responsible for this high standard of living. But America’s ranking among the countries in economic freedom has declined, and may…
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Myth: Markets can solve all problems without government at all
In much of the world, perhaps all of it, the basic problem is not only that governments do too much, but also that they do too little. But as they cease doing what they ought not to do, governments should start doing some of the things that would in fact increase justice and create the…
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Myth: All relations among humans can be reduced to market relations
Attempting to reduce all actions to a single motivation falsifies human experience. Not all human relationships are reducible to the same terms as markets; at the very least, those that involve involuntary “exchanges” are radically different, because they represent losses of opportunity and value, rather than opportunities to gain value.
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Myth: Privatizaton and marketization in post-communist societies were corrupt, which shows that markets are corrupting
Mere “privatization” in the absence of a functioning legal system is not the same as creating a market. Markets rest on a foundation of law; failed privatizations are not failures of the market, but failures of the state to create the legal foundations for markets.
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Myth: When prices are liberalized and subject to market forces, they just go up
While money prices may go up in the short time when prices are freed, the result is to increase production and diminish wasteful rationing and corruption, with the result that total real prices — expressed in terms of a basic commodity, human labor time — goes down.
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Myth: Markets only benefit the rich and talented
When trade takes place in free markets, both parties win. Free societies also lead to the “circulation of elites,” with no one guaranteed a place or kept from entering by accident of birth. The phrase “the rich get richer and the poor gets poorer” applies, not to free markets, but to mercantilism and political cronyism,…
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Myth: Markets debase culture and art
There is no contradiction between the market and art and culture. Market exchange is not the same as artistic experience or cultural enrichment, but it is a helpful vehicle for advancing both.
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Myth: Markets rest on the principle of the survival of the fittest
In market competition, the losers are not eaten by the winners, as is the case in biological competition. When business firms die, they are replaced by more efficient firms, and the investors, owners, managers, and employees are released to join more efficient firms.