Tag: Capitalism
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I, Pencil: A Most Important Story
I, Pencil is one of the most important and influential writings that explain the necessity for limited government. A simple object that we may not give much throught to, the story of the pencil illustrates the importance of markets, and the impossibility of centralized economic planning.
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The Value of the Businessman
An outstanding feature of the open market is the businessman, whose success or failure depends entirely on his ability to “focus on consumer needs” and so combine existing and potential factors of production to serve consumers most efficiently. The only constructive role government can play under the free market method of overcoming poverty is to…
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The Mystery of Capital
The problem with most third world countries, Mr. De Soto tells us, is not that there is no capital, it’s that the capital is dead. Dead in the sense that it can’t be used to its full economic potential. It can’t be mortgaged, it can’t be divided into shares, and it simply can’t be used…
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Tax increment financing in Iowa
Readers of The Voice For Liberty in Wichita are well aware that I believe that when the government provides subsidies to businesses — either in the form of cash payments or preferential tax treatment — we create a corrosive business environment. Government picks winners and losers for political reasons, rather than letting the market decide…
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I, Pencil
Do you think there exists a single person who knows how to make a lead pencil? In this article, Mr. Read shows us how there is no one who knows even a small fraction of what is necessary to produce even this simple, everyday item. How, then, does a lead pencil come to be manufactured?…
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Why government spending is (mostly) bad
Government spending replaces the judgment of the market with the judgment of politicians. The judgment of the market refers to the billions of decisions that we collectively make each day, decisions that we freely make, that we believe will advance our self-interest. That is to say, the market is characterized by mutual agreement and voluntary…
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Let free markets determine downtown Wichita’s viability
If you listen to local Wichita news media, our local politicians, and various community advocates, the desirability of downtown development over other development is accepted as a given. But what people actually do with their own money is different.