The term capitalism has long been used by critics as a catch-all to denote a system replete with greed, indulgence, excess, and deprivation. It is easy to misinterpret self-interest as selfishness and write off capitalism and economics. But the truth of the matter is much more complicated… I find myself still scratching my head over George [...]
Capitalism Worked, But We Were Told It Didn’t We study history to learn from it. If we can discover what worked and what didn’t work, we can use this knowledge wisely to create a better future. Studying the triumph of American industry, for example, is important because it is the story of how the [...]
Romanticizing and moralistic contempt of the economy, including contempt of the impulses which move the market economy and the institutions which support it, must be as far from our minds as economism, materialism, and utilitarianism... Editor's Note: The following excerpt comes from Wilhelm Röpke's excellent book, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market, first published [...]
How does it happen that in the eyes of workmen, of publicists, and statesmen, abundance should appear a thing to be dreaded, and scarcity advantageous? I propose to trace this illusion to its source… Which is best for man, and for society, abundance or scarcity? What! you exclaim, can that be a question? Has [...]
More than just the ultimate inflation hedge, the wealth of Nature—gold, forests, land, agriculture—and the cautious stewardship of these tangible assets over easily-inflated government “IOU’s” is what distinguishes wealth from riches… When King Louis XII, in the year 1499, formed the project of taking the Dukedom of Milan, to which he thought he had a [...]
Trade has always existed, and rich merchants have always been a part of the economic and political picture, but merchants have not always been the rulers, as they are today… In a recent essay for The Imaginative Conservative, I claimed that capitalism had its origins in England. I had expected such a sweeping statement to [...]
Did the Republicans centralize power in the federal government under Lincoln? No doubt. But perhaps the more important question is: Which policies did Lincoln tolerate in order to achieve his overarching goal?... Among those who consider themselves "conservatives" and/or "libertarians," the issue of the role of government in a free society is one of the [...]
Economics, as practiced today, is a utilitarian and materialistic study. It is concerned with maximizing profit, with describing the actions of man as an economic being, and explaining the allegedly inevitable results of supposed economic laws. Our Southern forebears did not practice economics. They practiced political economy—which is concerned with human well-being. Those old-time [...]
Only a short time ago, the prediction that Professor Milton Friedman would receive the Nobel Prize in economics would have been greeted by a broad spectrum of reactions ranging from horrified impossibility to an unemotional expression of obvious inevitability. Indeed, when the formal announcements were made in the fall of 1976, the range of [...]
In the “Overture” to his grandly symphonic The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Peter Gay describes the “international type” of the philosophe as a “facile, articulate, doctrinaire, sociable, secular man of letters.” On this definition, was Adam Smith a philosophe? Yes and no. Unlike his French counterparts, and even his bosom friend David Hume, he led [...]
Recently, I numbered among the twenty-some self-styled conservatives, organized by Steve Lonegan, who gathered at the headquarters of the Federal Reserve to meet with Chair Janet Yellen and governor Lael Brainard. (Steve is Director of Monetary Policy for American Principles in Action.) We met for an hour, with a selection of us giving remarks [...]
Every nation has its “founding myth,” as we are apt to hear from post-modern quarters. But is this ever true when it comes to our economic history. In curricula from K-12 to history graduate school, it is staple fare that as a new nation in the early nineteenth century, the United States nurtured its [...]
In Aristotle's view, “true wealth” was finite, restricted to those articles “useful to the association of the polis or the household,” and thus necessary to sustain “the good life.” The exchange of commodities for money with the aim of making a profit was an artificial, and potentially destructive, enterprise. Trade, Aristotle declared, should be mutually beneficial, [...]
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, by Sylvia Nasar, Simon & Schuster, 558 pages In December 1974, in the midst of the first energy crisis, Friedrich Hayek received the Nobel Prize in Sweden and confessed, “we have little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.” He admitted that [...]