Economics

Adam Smith and Loveliness

Adam Smith and the Uniform Quest for Betterment

Adam Smith argued that the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” was inherent in human nature and gave rise to things such as the division of labour (1776)

Adam Smith argues that retaliation in a trade war can sometimes force the offending country to lower its tariffs, but more often than not the reverse happens (1776)

Adam Smith debunks that idea that when it comes to public debt “we owe it to ourselves” (1776)

Adam Smith notes that colonial governments might exercise relative freedom in the metropolis but impose tyranny in the distant provinces (1776)

Adam Smith observes that the true costs of war remain hidden from the taxpayers because they are sheltered in the metropole far from the fighting and instead of increasing taxes the government pays for the war by increasing the national debt (1776)

Adam Smith on compulsory attendance in the classroom (1776)

Adam Smith on consumption as the only end and purpose of production

Adam Smith on Good Wine and Free Trade

Adam Smith on how “furious monopolists” will fight to the bitter end to keep their privileges (1776)

Adam Smith on how governments learn from each other the best way of draining money from the pockets of the people (1776)

Adam Smith on Inequality Between the Rich and the Poor

Adam Smith on money as an instrument of commerce as well as a measure of value

Adam Smith on the Butcher, the Brewer, and the Baker

Adam Smith on the greater productivity brought about by the division of labor and technological innovation (1760s)

Adam Smith on the natural ordering Tendency of Free Markets, or what he called the “Invisible Hand” (1776)

Adam Smith on the “liberal system” of free trade (1776)

Adam Smith on who colleges and universities ACTUALLY benefit

Adam Smith, Employment, and the Advantages to Society

Alchian on Competition and Coordinated Cooperation

Alchian on the Right and “cost” of Free Speech

Anthony de Jasay on the free rider problem (2008)

Armen Alchian and the Scarcity of Resources

Armen Alchian on Perpetuities

Armen Alchian on Scarcity

Arthur Seldon on the problem of “who guards us from the guardians”? (1990)

Bagehot on Government, the banking system, and moral hazard (1873)

Bagehot on the monopoly central bank (1873)

Bastiat asks the fundamental question of political economy: what should be the size of the state? (1850)

Bastiat criticizes the socialists of wanting to be the “Great Mechanic” who would run the “social machine” in which ordinary people were merely so many lifeless cogs and wheels (1848)

Bastiat on disbanding the standing army and replacing it with local militias (1847)

Bastiat on the fact that even in revolution there is an indestructible principle of order in the human heart (1848)

Bastiat on the many freedoms that make up liberty (1848)

Bastiat on the most universally useful freedom, namely to work and to trade (1847)

Bastiat on the need for urgent political and economic reform (1848)

Bastiat on the scramble for political office (1848)

Bastiat on the spirit of free trade as a reform of the mind itself (1847)

Bastiat on the state vs. laissez-faire (1848)

Bastiat on trade as a the mutual exchange of “a service for another service” (1848)

Bastiat’s has a utopian dream of drastically reducing the size of the French state (1847)

Bastiat’s Malthusian theory of the growth of the state (1847)

Bastiat, the 1830 Revolution, and the Spilling of Wine not Blood (1830)

Bentham on the liberty of contracts and lending money at interest (1787)

Bernard Mandeville concludes his fable of the bees with a moral homily on the virtues of peace, hard work, and diligence (1705)

Bernard Mandeville on how the Hardships and Fatigues of War bear most heavily on the “working slaving People” (1732)

Bernard Mandeville uses a fable about bees to show how prosperity and good order comes about through spontaneous order (1705)

Bernhard Knollenberg on the Belief of many colonial Americans that Liberty was lost because the Leaders of the People had failed in their Duty (2003)

Condy Raguet argues that governments cannot create wealth by means of legislation and that individuals are better judges of the best way to use their capital and labor than governments (1835)

David Ricardo and the Happiness of a Country

David Ricardo considered taxation to be a “great evil” which hindered the accumulation of productive capital and reduced consumption (1817)

David Ricardo on how “insecure tenure” of property rights harms the poor (1824)

David Ricardo on Taxation

David Ricardo on the “mere increase of money” (1809)

David Ricardo on Wages and the Deflation of Currency

David Ricardo, Paper Money, and the Abuse of Power

Destutt de Tracy on society as “nothing but a succession of exchanges” (1817)

Destutt de Tracy on the damage which government debt and the class which lives off loans to the state cause the industrious classes (1817)

Destutt de Tracy on the mutually beneficial nature of exchange (1817)

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk argues that Marx ignored the fact that the same amount of labor time should be rewarded differently depending upon where along the structure of production it took place (1898)

Frédéric Bastiat, while pondering the nature of war, concluded that society had always been divided into two classes - those who engaged in productive work and those who lived off their backs (1850)

Frank Taussig argues for the reverse of a common misconception about the relationship between high wages and the use of machinery (1915)

Frédéric Bastiat and the state as “la grande fiction à travers laquelle Tout Le Monde s'efforce de vivre aux dépens de Tout Le Monde (1848)

Frédéric Bastiat asks what came first, property or law? (1850)

Frédéric Bastiat on the state as the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else (1848)

Frédéric Bastiat’s theory of plunder (1850)

Friedrich Hayek rediscovers the importance of Henry Thornton’s early 19th century work on “paper credit” and its role in financing the British Empire (1802)

Friedrich List and Manufacturing Power

Guyot on the protectionist tyranny (1906)

Hayek on Spontaneous Order and the Division of Labor

Henry George on a “free trade America” as the real city set on a hill (1886)

Henry George on how trade sanctions hurt domestic consumers (1886)

Henry George on the scramble to get government favors known as trade “protection” (1886)

Herbert Spencer on the idea that society is a spontaneous growth and not artificially put together (1860)

Horace Say on “I, Pin” and the international division of labor (1852)

Israel Kirzner on the Individual and the Market

J.B. Say argues that colonial slave labor is really quite profitable for the slave owners at the expense of the slaves and the home consumers (1817)

J.B. Say on the self-evident nature of property rights which is nevertheless violated by the state in taxation and slavery (1817)

J.M. Keynes reflected on that “happy age” of international commerce and freedom of travel that was destroyed by the cataclysm of the First World War (1920)

James Buchanan on “process” and the market order (1982)

James Mill’s formulation of “Say’s Law” (1808)

Jane Haldimand Marcet, in a popular tale written for ordinary readers, shows the benefits to workers of foreign trade, especially at Christmas time (1833)

Jasay on the superiority of “spontaneous conventions” over “legal frameworks” (2007)

Jean-Baptiste Say argues that home-consumers bear the brunt of the cost of maintaining overseas colonies and that they also help support the lavish lifestyles of the planter and merchant classes (1817)

Jean-Baptiste Say argues that there is a world of difference between private consumption and public consumption; an increase in the latter does nothing to increase public wealth (1803)

Jean-Baptiste Say regards regulations which favor producers as a form of political privilege at the expence of the community (1803)

Kirzner defines economics as the reconciliation of conflicting ends given the existence of inescapable scarcity (1960)

Leggett on the tendency of the government to become “the universal dispenser of good and evil” (1834)

Leonard Read on Ludwig von Mises as the economic dictator of the U.S. (1971)

Lord Macaulay writes a devastating review of Southey’s Colloquies in which the Poet Laureate’s ignorance of the real condition of the working class in England is exposed (1830)

Ludwig Lachmann and the free market as a leveling process in the distribution of wealth (1956)

Ludwig von Mises argues that monopolies are the direct result of government intervention and not the product of any inherent tendency within the capitalist system (1949)

Ludwig von Mises argues that the division of labor and human cooperation are the two sides of the same coin and are not antagonistic to each other (1949)

Ludwig von Mises lays out five fundamental truths of monetary expansion (1949)

Ludwig von Mises on the impossibility of rational economic planning under Socialism (1922)

Ludwig von Mises shows the inevitability of economic slumps after a period of credit expansion (1951)

Mandeville on the social cooperation which is required to produce a piece of scarlet cloth (1723)

McCulloch argues that the right to property extends to “the faculties of (one’s) mind and the powers of (one’s) body” (1864)

Milton Friedman and the Free Society

Milton Friedman on the Deconcentration of Power

Mises on how the “boon” of a tariff privilege is soon dissipated (1949)

Mises on the gold standard as the symbol of international peace and prosperity (1949)

Mises on the interconnection between economic and political freedom (1949)

Mises on the public sector as “tax eaters” who “feast” on the assets of the ordinary tax payer (1953)

Molinari defends the right to property against the socialists who want to overthrow it, and the conservatives who defend it poorly (1849)

Molinari on mankind’s never-ending struggle for liberty (1849)

Montesquieu thought that commerce improves manners and cures “the most destructive prejudices” (1748)

Nassau Senior argues that government is based upon extortion (1854)

Nassau Senior objected to any government regulation of factories which meant that a horde of inspectors would interfere with the organization of production (1837)

Nassau Senior on how the universal acceptance of gold and silver currency creates a world economy (1830)

Nicholas Barbon on the mutual benefits of free trade even in luxury goods (“wants of the mind”) (1690)

Nisbet on how violent, contact sports like football redirect people’s energies away from war (1988)

Paul Heyne on THE economic way of thinking (1995)

Philip Wicksteed on how impersonal economic relations help others (1910)

Philip Wicksteed on “non-tuism” in economic relations (1910)

Philip Wicksteed’s positive vision of the “cash nexus” (1910)

Richard Cobden on how free trade would unite mankind in the bonds of peace (1850)

Richard Cobden’s “I have a dream” speech about a world in which free trade is the governing principle (1846)

Robert Nisbet on the Shock the Founding Fathers would feel if they could see the current size of the Military Establishment and the National Government (1988)

Samuel Fortrey, Public Profit, and Public Good

Say on a person’s property right in their own “industrious faculties” (1819)

Spooner on the “natural right to labor” and to acquire all one honestly can (1846)

The 11th Day of Christmas: Mises on the gold standard and peace on earth (1934)

The 12th Day of Christmas: Frank Chodorov on free trade as the harbinger of goodwill among men and peace on earth (1940)

Thomas Hodgskin noted in his journey through the northern German states that the burden of heavy taxation was no better than it had been under the conqueror Napoleon (1820)

Thomas Hodgskin on the futility of politicians tinkering with bad laws when the whole political system needed to be changed (1832)

Vera Smith on Central Banking and the Scottish System

Vera Smith on How the Civil War Changed the US Banking System

William Cobbett on the dangers posed by the “Paper Aristocracy” (1804)

William Cobbett opposes the government bail-out at taxpayer expence of those who lent money to the state (1815)

William Fox on the hypocrisy of those who do not want to be dependent on foreign trade (1844)

William Grampp shows how closely connected Richard Cobden’s desire for free trade was to his desire for peace (1960)

Yves Guyot accuses all those who seek Protection from foreign competition of being “Socialists” (1893)

Yves Guyot on the violence and lawlessness inherent in socialism (1910)