June
2023

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2023

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2023

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2023

June 2023

May 2023

Article

John Locke: Mercantilist?

By Amy Willis

I recently had occasion to read (for the first time) John Locke's "Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money." [SC]1 Among other things, this got me thinking about the common claim that Locke was a mercantilist.2 I th...

Article

The Economics of Aging: Living Longer versus Living Better

By Amy Willis

The July 2021 issue of Nature Aging—one of the prestigious Nature periodicals' group—published "The Economic Value of Targeting Aging."1 It begins by asserting that changes in U.S. life expectancy and attention to "healthy aging" raise questions that biomedical scientist...

Article

Let Go of the Zero-Sum Fallacy and Enjoy Others’ Good Fortune

By Art Carden

People believe many myths, but I suspect few are as pernicious as the zero-sum fallacy. It sees the world as a story of an unending struggle over a fixed prize such that someone who has something only has it because someone else does not. It's an understandable thing to beli...

Book Review

Legal Safeguards Against Omnipotent Lawmakers

By Pierre Lemieux

A Book Review of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, by Friedrich A. Hayek. Jeremy Shearmur, editor.1 Friedrich Hayek's trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty, published in three separate volumes in 1973, 1976, and 1979, was recently republished in a single book under the ...

April 2023

Article

Liberty Tours: Why Tourism Matters to Liberty

By Adam Martin and Alexander Combs

What is the relevance of tourism to a classical liberal? For the casual observer, tourism may "merely" be interpreted as an opportunistic, temporal break from everyday routines. As important as this may be for many, tourism is an important subject of research i...

Book Review

On the Rise of the “Economic Style of Reasoning”

By Donald J. Boudreaux

A Book Review of Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy, by Elizabeth Popp Berman.1 The thesis of University of Michigan sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman's 2022 book, Thinking Like an Economist, is straightforward. From the ...

Book Review

Touching the Elephant

By Amy Willis

Review of China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, by Yuen Yuen Ang.1 The parable of blind men touching an elephant is a good description of how scholars are putting forward theories to explain the growth of China. Wanting to know what an...

Kling's Corner

Cooperation Requires Large Brains

By Arnold Kling

The foundation stone of uniquely human agency is individuals' ability and propensity to form with others a joint goal, thereby creating an evolutionarily unique, socially constituted feedback control system. ——Michael Tomasello, The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral...

March 2023

Article

Liberty Tours: Why Tourism Matters to Liberty

By Amy Willis

What is the relevance of tourism to a classical liberal? For the casual observer, tourism may "merely" be interpreted as an opportunistic, temporal break from everyday routines. As important as this may be for many, tourism is an important subject of research inquiry for...

Liberty Classics

Rules for Non-Radicals

By Amy Willis

A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan.1 Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan's The Reason of Rules is remarkable. It is an important book, and the questions that the authors wr...

Book Review

The Long, Hard Road to “Longtermism”

By Amy Willis

Book Review of What We Owe the Future, by William MacAskill.1 An issue that has long divided scholars is the question of how much weight to give to the interests of future generations, especially when making decisions of significant public importance. On one side of ...

Kling's Corner

Financial Policy

By Arnold Kling

... [this book] originated, strange to say, as a study of the history of the international bond market. I came to realize in the course of my research, however, that the bond between creditor and debtor was only one of many bonds I needed to consider; and that in many way...