What Libertarians Mean By The Free Market

Markets are much more than multinational corporations, banking firms, and stock brokerages on Wall Street, though all of those things are the result of a market system.Sound economies, from the biggest multinational banks to a childs sidewalk lemonade stand, operate on the principles of private property and exchange. These concepts are the building blocks of free societies, and it is the system of countless small trades, taken as a whole, that we call “the market.”It is important to note that these trades are positive sum win-win situations: each party agrees to a trade because they value what theyre getting more than what theyre giving up.And when those trades are voluntary–when nothing is preventing people from making trades or forcing people to make trades–that results in a free market, which makes everyone healthier, wealthier, more peaceful, and more technologically advanced.Thats what libertarians mean when they defend the free market.

via What Libertarians Mean By The Free Market – YouTube.

Why Do We Exchange Things?

If we each have a boxed lunch with the same sandwich, chips, a pickle, and a cookie, why would we consider trading items? Perhaps I prefer chips and you prefer cookies. Maybe I’ll give you my cookie for your chips. Now both of us are happier with our lunches. This is one example of how exchange can make people better off even without increasing the total amount of wealth. Exchange helps correct mistakes in allocation and it makes everyone involved happier. Professor Michael C. Munger offers a few examples of how exchange can make people happier whether people have the same preferences or different preferences, the same stuff to start with or different stuff. The ability to make people better off by simple exchange may seem like magic, Munger says, but it’s just markets.

via Why Do We Exchange Things? – YouTube.

John A. Allison discusses Peter Wallison’s Book “Bad History, Worse Policy” on C-SPAN2

John Allison is the President and CEO of the Cato Institute. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was Chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During his tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. He was recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade.

Allison has received the Corning Award for Distinguished Leadership, been inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Banker. He is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Business, and serves on the Board of Visitors at the business schools at Wake Forest, Duke, and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Allison is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his master’s degree in management from Duke University, and is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking.

via John A. Allison discusses Peter Wallison's Book "Bad History, Worse Policy" on C-SPAN 2's Book TV – YouTube.

Make It Hurt

Bill Whittle thinks that President Obama is trying to deliberately hurt America through the questionable sequester budget cuts. Why would the President of the United States try to punish the nation he has sworn to protect?

via PJTV: Making It Hurt – YouTube.

TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL h/t Robert A. Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, was one of the most recognizable and influential proponents of liberty and markets in the 20th century, and the leader of the Chicago School of economics.In this video from the grand opening of the Cato Institutess headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1993, Milton Friedman gives a talk about popular political aphorisms, one of his favorites being the one he helped popularize in the title of his 1975 book, “Theres no such thing as a free lunch.”

Download the .mp3 version of this lecture here: http://bit.ly/X4cW9X

 

Truth About Gas Prices

The common explanation for rising gas prices makes an exciting news story: Villainous oil companies are taking advantage of helpless consumers. Prof. Art Carden explains that this popular story is inaccurate. Gas prices go up and down based on the laws of supply and demand. Political problems, such as barriers to the development of new sources and new energy sources, also contribute to rising prices. Gas prices would be lower if we didn’t have such barriers. Prices would also be lower if demand were not artificially increased through war and other wasteful expenditures.

via Why Are Gas Prices So High? – YouTube.

Has the Worm Turned?

You have to wonder when SNL takes on Obama’s nonsense.

 

 

Saturday Night Live opened the March 2, 2013 episode taking on the big sequestration fight in Congress, with Jay Pharaoh as President Obama admitting to the American people that “I really have no idea how money works or how budgets work,” but did his best to explain to the American people the real-world effects of the budget cuts.

via SNL – Obama Budget Cut Methods – YouTube.

Is America Becoming Europe?

Across the Atlantic, Americans see European economies faltering under enormous debt, overburdened welfare states, governments controlling close to fifty percent of the economy, high taxation, heavily regulated labor markets, aging populations, and large numbers of public sector workers. They also see a European political class that is unable — and, in many cases, unwilling — to implement economic reform. This timely and sobering video explains why Americans cannot ignore the “canary in the coalmine” across the pond in determining our future. We must ask the question: “Is America becoming Europe?”To learn more read Dr. Samuel Greggs Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594036373/

via Is America Becoming Europe? – YouTube.

Krugman: Death Panels & Sales Taxes

Not the way he advocated for ObummerCare. I’ll leave it to the viewer to determine when he lied, then or now. And why?

The Difference between Economic Shools

I have been trying to come up with a very short easily remembered summation of the differences between the major schools of economic thought. If you like it pass it along.

There are two major schools of economic thought, the London and the Austrian. The London School is hundreds of theories addressing how political power can manage an economy. The Austrian School explains how the actual human interaction that comprises an economy works.