What Does an Economy Do? If what we said in the last installment is correct, then the first task of any humane science is to determine what its purpose is. The indispensable requirement for any economic system is that it must provide the material basis for life for a sufficient number of its citizens so [...]
Some wag somewhere has remarked that economists suffer from “physics envy.” One could certainly make that charge against W.S. Jevons (1835-1882), one of the founders of marginal economics, when he wrote that a “perfect system of statistics … is the only … obstacle in the way of making economics an exact science”; once the statistics [...]
Property in the hands of labor is freedom. Labor in the hands of property is slavery.—Dmitri Kleiner From the earliest days of Distributism, distributists have exhibited a certain lack of interest in economics. This is a rather odd stance for the adherents of an economic theory. Distributism was defended generally on moral and social grounds, [...]
Our friends at ISI Books have recently published a very interesting new book on the political economy entitled Toward A Truly Free Market. Author John Médaille describes the theme of the book this way: “Economics, or more properly, political economy, cannot be a proper science unless it is a humane science; to be a humane [...]