When one looks at the downward trend of Cable TV, it looks like a great example of “creative destruction.” This media evolution is a great deal for consumers and content creators alike. For more than a quarter-century, we’ve been hearing predictions about the demise...
A post on reason.com titled "Don't Confuse 'Local Control' with Small Government" provided several examples of what conservatives get wrong about progressives. The post was about how a conservative city Huntington Beach, is challenging the state's recent housing...
The fundamental question I often ask is, "What is the optimal role of Government?" And I usually use Building Codes as an example. I ask it this way, should the government "MANDATE" building codes? Or should we let the free market do its thing? Or should it be a...
Original PDF of Bitcoin – A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System – Satoshi Nakamoto. This is intended to be a “Base 0” Learning Packet from this new Learning Packets can be built.
This lesson on the Schools of Economic Thought is additive to the Class on Economic Schools of Thought and helps us make better predictions.
What Is Behavioral Economics? Behavioral economics is, in a way, at the intersection of economics and psychology. In fact, the "behavioral" in behavioral economics can be thought of as the analog of the "behavioral" in behavioral psychology. On one hand, traditional...
Libertarianism is identified as a political philosophy by its commitment to strong rights of private property, free markets, and strictly limited government. Though this is true to a certain extent of all libertarians, it is most clearly and consistently true of...
Understanding the S-Curve is critical to predicting the future.
Creating a Federal Minimum Wage is a Bad Idea for a number of reasons. There is nothing "necessarily" wrong with a community setting a minimum wage. But that minimum wage must be voluntary and limited to that single community. The Congressional Budget Office released...
Is America destined to become like California? Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey created a stir recently when he tweeted out an article calling for an end to bipartisanship and the beginning of nationwide, one-party rule—similar to the Golden State. He called it a “great read.”...
Fractal Economics is giving economics its “Copernican Moment.” Before Copernicus, it was widely believed that everything – including the Sun – revolved around the Earth, rather than the Earth revolving around the Sun. Everyone used Ptolemy’s description of the...
Conservatives often regard any community provided "safety net" as either morally illegitimate or economically destructive. This lesson will examine why opposition to any safety net is the default Conservative position, and why some Conservatives don't believe this is...
Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042366#authcontrib Abstract Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in U.S....
Senate Intel Panel Finds ‘Absolutely No Evidence’ of Collusion, Faced Roadblocks The Senate Intelligence Committee said in a long-awaited report released Tuesday that there is no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the...
Takeaways From the Senate Committee Report on Russian Interference Senators divided along party lines about whether to conclude that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin’s election sabotage operations. Democrats and Republicans could not agree on whether...
“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm...
The autocrat problem Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has used the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to further centralize authority. The European Union seems to be functioning better than the United States in some big ways right now. Europe has been far more...
Nock and Mencken on Democracy and Equality Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) and Henry L. Mencken (1880–1956) were the two leading libertarian intellectuals of the Old Right, during the thirties of the twentieth century. Both defended laissez-faire but opposed the New Deal,...
Hayek on Health Care and Other Social Safety Nets This lesson is on how Hayek views Health Care and other Social Safety Nets. The following passage is taken from The Road to Serfdom, Text and Documents, The Definitive Edition, by F. A. Hayek, edited by Bruce Caldwell,...
Frank S. Meyer: The Fusionist as Libertarian Until a few years ago, the conservative spectrum could be comfortably sundered into the "traditionalists" at one pole, the "libertarians" at the other, and the "fusionists" as either judicious synthesizers or muddled...
Lesson on Federalist Paper #10. What are Factions and why are they important. Madison lays out a great strategy to achieve political stability.
Fundamentals Of Fractal Markets Theory< In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many have challenged the dominant economic theories and perspectives on markets. The Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in particular has fallen short in explaining the crisis. According...
The activities for Economics in One Day are developed around the themes of Leonard E. Read’s classic essay, ‘‘I, Pencil.’’ ARTICLE: I, Pencil: My Family Tree - Leonard Reed (FEE.org) [http://at.fee.org/1yAq6Jf] ‘‘Not a single person in the world knows all the...
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https://fee.org/articles/61-quick-facts-and-observations-on-socialism-jesus-and-wealth/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020_FEEDaily 61 Quick Facts and Observations on Socialism, Jesus, and Wealth Was Jesus of Nazareth truly a socialist? An...
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but...
This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals. From The Use of Knowledge in Society.
Ludig von Mises
Aggregate demand is an economic measurement of the total amount of demand for all finished goods and services produced in an economy. Aggregate demand is expressed as the total amount of money exchanged for those goods and services at a specific price level and point...
Fractal Politics The evolution of digital technologies and the evolution of contemporary society and politics have facilitated fractal thinking. It is fairly obvious that technology innovations can facilitate cultural and political innovations, which in-turn...
Twelve Economic Concepts Everyone Should Know 1. Gains from trade: In any economic exchange, freely chosen, both parties benefit–at least in their own minds. 2. Subjective value: The value of any good or service is determined by the individual human mind....
From An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chap. 2 by Adam Smith. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce...
He says Ford proved that higher wages led to more productivity, which in turn was good for business. That positive feedback loop gave rise to a broad, prosperous middle class. But over the years, waves of economic pressures and political changes have broken that link....
“The uniform, constant and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition … is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of...
This essay by Matt Zwolinski provides a strong argument for a Hayekian Case for Free Markets how they fit into a stable economic system.
Some of Hayek’s biggest ideas including the Use of Knowledge in Society, The Road to Serfdom, and Individualism: True or False.
“No human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient [for] the duty of superintending the industry of private people..." “[Governments are] ...without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.” “The agents of [government] regard the wealth of their master...
Fractal Politics “The rise of fractal politics” was first submitted to the Nine Dots Prize in response to the question, “Are digital technologies making politics impossible?” The essay was written as a thought piece prior to the announcement of the 2017 UK General...
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher (16 August 1911 – 4 September 1977) was a German-British statistician and economist who is best known for his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies.[1] He served as Chief Economic Advisor to the British...
This is an evergreen list of important economic thinkers. This list is dynamic and represents the important voices we need to study.
The Condensed Wealth of Nations and The Incredibly Condensed Theory of Moral Sentiments Eamonn Butler Contents 1 Introduction 4 2 The Condensed Wealth of Nations 7Book I: Economic efficiency and the factors of production 9Book II: The accumulation of...
Cartesianism, the philosophical and scientific traditions derived from the writings of the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650). Metaphysically and epistemologically, Cartesianism is a species of rationalism, because Cartesians hold that knowledge—indeed,...
According to Hayek, there are two opposing ideas about how to understand individuals and the society in which they live: true individualism and false individualism. These ideas permeate all social and political thought. They apply to beliefs about reason and knowledge, economics, justice, equality, power, tradition, marriage and family, and government.
Introduction If Friedrich Hayek is not in our discussions on how best to govern a community, he should be. Not only because his most popular book, The Road to Serfdom, was used by Reagan and Thacher to run a country (their own admission), but because he has a lot of...
Is America destined to become like California? Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey created a stir recently when he tweeted out an article calling for an end to bipartisanship and the beginning of nationwide, one-party rule—similar to the Golden State. He called it a “great read.”...
China, which previously threatened tariffs on pork, fruit, and other commodities, today expanded the list to include soybeans, cars, and airplanes. The Bezos #FAKENEWS!!1! Washington Post reports: President Trump showed no sign Wednesday of backing down from an...
Posted: Apr 03, 2018 12:01 AM The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com. Is it possible that Donald Trump is winning on trade? Last week, Trump apparently delivered two underappreciated victories as a result of...
The complete essay from F. A. Hayek called: “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” It is a fundamental document our Learning Network uses to process information
The real attraction of profoundly bad ideas is that they have the attraction of seeming logical and commonsense. For instance, a lot of conservatives are enamored of term limits. This looks appealing (once you assume away the fact that we do have term limits, we call...
In my post yesterday about freshly-announced benefits from tax reform -- here's another bummer for Pelosi and friends -- I warned that in spite of Americans' positivity on the economy and growing support for the GOP-passed law, outsized Democratic enthusiasm threatens...
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court precedents that have stood the test of time for generations are in danger of falling like dominoes in the next few months. First on the chopping block is a 1977 ruling that allowed public employee unions to collect fees from non-members for...
Five companies that have been associated with cryptocurrencies are AMD, NVIDIA, Overstock, Square and TSMC. AMD, NVIDIA and TSMC provide hardware to mine the digital currencies while Overstock and Square accept them for payment. Bitcoin and workers with a pickaxe and...
When a friend of Jamie Smith’s first urged her to work at a Bitcoin company, her first reaction was, "That’s criminal money, I want nothing to do with that." But once the former press officer for the White House began learning more about the cryptocurrency, she...
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are all the rage with investors — even as their prices have taken some big hits lately. So it should come as no surprise that there are now two exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, focused on blockchain technology, the digital ledger that...
Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, but as the first iteration of a revolutionary idea, it was born with notable drawbacks. For instance, one feature of Bitcoin’s blockchain-based currency — security guaranteed by a decentralized method of tracking transactions — is...
Bitcoin will likely "totally collapse," Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller has told CNBC, adding that it reminds him of "tulip mania" centuries ago in the Netherlands. The Yale University professor said there are "bubbles everywhere," not just in bitcoin,...
Cryptocurrency dip buyers have returned after Bitcoin crumbled through key support and hit a low of less than $10,000 overnight. But the gains seen earlier this morning have solidified in Asian trade, and Bitcoin has now bounced by almost 20% today off its overnight...
Think about a gold wedding band. There are three distinct phases of that gold band. Phase 1 is the beginning of life for band, the mining and manufacturing of the band. Phase 2 is the longest period for the band, the time it is worn. And Phase 3 is when the band...