Tag: Free markets
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Farm bill contains energy spending
The farm bill contains wasteful spending on energy.
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Brownback on wind, again
This week Kansas Governor Sam Brownback again made the case for extending the production tax credit for wind power.
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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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Kansas STAR bonds vote tests beliefs in capitalism, economic freedom
An upcoming vote in the Kansas Legislature, possibly today, will let Kansans know who is truly in favor of economic freedom, limited government, and free market capitalism — and who favors crony capitalism instead.
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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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Wichita taxicab regulations likely to impede progress
The Wichita City Council will consider new taxicab regulations that, city hall hopes, will improve tax service in Wichita. But the regulations create high barriers to entry that stifle entrepreneurship and market competition, likely dooming the program to fail.
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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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Intellectuals vs. the rest of us
Why are so many opposed to private property and free exchange — capitalism, in other words — in favor of large-scale government interventionism? Lack of knowledge, or ignorance, is one answer, but there is another.
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Political cronyism has become the way
Cronyism is the practice of seeking business success through government rather than through markets. The difference is that business succeeds in the market by providing goods and services that people are willing to buy. Political cronyism, on the other hand, results in people being forced to buy from, or to otherwise involuntarily subsidize, certain business…