Carbon taxes are a perversion of market theory

Carbon taxes are a perversion of free-market economic theory | Financial Post | Terence Corcoran:

November 3, 2023 - "Canada would not be embroiled in a political carbon tax crisis today were it not for the background endorsement of economists who argue that a carbon tax is a principled market mechanism that can be used to correct a 'market failure' such as climate change. In the words of a now-famous 2019 statement signed by 45 market-oriented economists, including former U.S. Federal Reserve chairs Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, a carbon tax is a sound market-based solution to a global problem. 'By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future.' Since 2019, the statement has been signed by more than 3,600 economic thinkers and is described by the Climate Leadership Council as 'The largest public statement of economists in history'....

"The 'invisible hand' mentioned in the economic statement gives the impression that a carbon tax is aligned with the ideas that enlightenment economist Adam Smith and others — from liberals to neo-liberals to libertarians — have championed over government control and planning. The economists’ endorsement of invisible hand principles in the context of a carbon tax is, at minimum, misleading. The imposition of a carbon price by government — such as Canada’s $170 a tonne target — is nothing but a government price-fixing scheme. 

"In a market economy, prices are not the starting line for economic activity nor are they the means to control supply and demand as implied by proponents of carbon taxation. Prices are the end point of economic activity. In a market economy prices are the product of supply and demand based on the multitude of individual and corporate choices that lead to final transaction prices. The dynamic of supply and demand determines price, a process that takes place outside the knowledge and thought processes of the economic actors. 

“'Every money price of a good on the market, is determined by the supply and demand schedules of the individual buyers and sellers, and their action tends to establish a uniform equilibrium price on the market at the point of intersection.' So wrote the late Murray N. Rothbard in Man, Economy and State: A Treatise on Economic Principles. Another giant of free-market economics, Friedrich Hayek, described the invisible hand process in his 1946 essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” In a market economy, no one person or power determines pricing. 

It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.

"Using tax power to set a price to force a market movement stands the economic system on its head and gets the process backwards. With carbon taxation, the state is imposing a visible hand in an extreme and unprecedented way. For one thing, no participant in a market economy driven by the invisible hand would or could raise prices so as to ultimately reduce demand to zero.... 

"The idea that high and rising carbon prices can be used to remove carbon from the economy runs up against the fact that carbon-based fossil fuels are currently part of the foundation for most economic activity. They are essential today, to the point where industry and consumers cannot do without them. They are, as economists say, price inelastic. A doubling or even a quadrupling via taxation will not end demand for fossil fuels without killing economic activity. According to the 3,600 economist backers of carbon taxation, this little problem can be overcome by returning all the revenue from the carbon taxes to taxpayers 'to maximize the fairness and political viability of a rising carbon tax.' The Trudeau Liberal plan for Canada follows that advice.

"There is nothing invisible about carbon taxes. They are a perversion of free-market economic theory. We should bite the visible hand and axe the tax."

Read more: https://financialpost.com/opinion/carbon-taxes-perversion-free-market-economic-theory

Carbon tax making life unaffordable for Canadians: Sask. premier | Power & Politics | CBC News | March 28, 2024:

Walter E. Williams (1936-2020)

 'I Just Do My Own Thing': Walter Williams, RIP | Reason - Nick Gillespie:

December 2, 2020 - "I'm saddened to write of the death of libertarian economist Walter E. Williams. He passed away Wednesday morning at the age of 84, less than a day after teaching a class at George Mason University, where he worked for 40 years and helped transform his department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. A popular syndicated columnist whose work appeared in over a hundred newspapers on a weekly basis, he was a long-time contributor to Reason and served as an emeritus trustee of Reason Foundation....

"Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Williams grew up as a neighbor to Bill Cosby in the city's racially segregated housing projects and was drafted into the peacetime Army during the Cold War. A self-described 'crazy-ass man who insisted on talking about liberty in America' long before he was a public intellectual, the racist violence and abuse he suffered at the hands of police, military officers, and other authorities informed much of his work. In his powerful, evocative 2010 memoir, Up From the Projects, he recounts the time when, as a cab driver in the City of Brotherly Love, he was ordered out of his cab by a white officer, beaten up, and then charged with disorderly conduct."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/12/02/i-just-do-my-own-thing-walter-williams-rip/

Walter Williams, RIP | Cato@Liberty - David Boaz:

"After early stints as a cab driver, a soldier in Korea, and a probation officer, Walter focused on education and got a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1972. From 1973 to 1980 he taught at Temple University in Philadelphia before moving to George Mason University for the rest of his career.

"In 1982 he published a book of original research and provocative ideas, The State Against Blacks, which Don Boudreaux describes in today’s Wall Street Journal as 'an eloquent, data‐​rich broadside against occupational licensing, taxicab regulations, labor‐​union privileges and other fine‐​sounding government measures that inflict disproportionate harm on blacks by restricting the employment options and by driving up the costs of goods and services'. His work in these areas and his outgoing, engaging, effective style of communications brought him broader public attention. He appeared in Milton Friedman’s PBS series “Free to Choose” in 1980. He became a frequent guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show.... 

"In 1989 the Cato Institute and Praeger published Walter’s book South Africa’s War against Capitalism. In it he showed, with detailed economic and historical analysis, that ... 'South Africa’s apartheid is not the corollary of free‐​market or capitalist forces. Apartheid is the result of anticapitalistic or socialistic efforts to subvert the operation of market (capitalistic) forces.'"

Read more: https://www.cato.org/blog/walter-williams-rip

In Memoriam: Walter E. Williams, 1936-2020 | Forbes - Art Carden: 

December 3, 2020 - "Williams’s work and commentary was informed by a deep understanding of how free people in free markets find ways to help one another. Howard Baetjer explains the 'Invisible Hand Principle' in his short book Economics and Free Markets. He quotes Williams, who said 'In a free market, you get more for yourself by serving your fellow man. You don’t have to care about him! Just serve him.'

"We get, as Adam Smith explained, what we want by helping other people get what they want. Importantly, this requires us to respect their right to say 'no.' Free markets rest on a profound respect for others’ dignity. A free market is possible and productive when we recognize that other people are not merely means to our ends, created to serve us or created to live as we want them to. If we want to secure their cooperation, we have to give them what they want rather than what we think is best for them. Few people understood this better than Walter Williams."

Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2020/12/03/in-memoriam-walter-e-williams-1936-2020/?sh=5fbe44b18fe4

U.S. third parties marginalized in midterms

How Third Parties Are Getting Screwed This Election Season - Reason.com Matt Walsh & Alexis Garcia:

October 26, 2018 - "The 2018 midterms have been chock full of two-party shenanigans, all too often aided and abetted by journalists, pollsters, and the voters themselves.

"It all starts with ballot access. If a state government considers you a 'major party,' getting on the ballot is a snap. Worst-case scenario, you need to collect signatures from a tiny fraction of your own registered voter base. Best case, you just show up.

"Third-party and independent candidates, on the other hand, have to collect tens of thousands of signatures in some states – 15,000 to run for governor in New York, for example, including at least 100 in each congressional district. Arizona Republicans ... changed the law to say that Libertarians need to collect signatures not just from their own members but from registered independents as well. And by the way, the Green Party is subject to a less stringent set of rules.... Some states push their filing deadlines all the way back to a year before the election....

"New Hampshire this year herded all third parties under the same ballot line, confusingly titled 'Libertarians and Other Candidates.' New Mexico tried — and thankfully failed — to institute a 'straight party' ballot, meaning voters in this 3:2 Democratic state could automatically vote for all the candidates in one party by checking off just one box....

"Getting your name on the ballot doesn't mean it will be included in the polls. The Nevada race for U.S. Senate is universally rated a tossup, and yet the first three independent polls released this October failed to include Libertarian Tim Hagan...

"How about debates? Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dale Kerns was assured of a spot on stage, then uninvited. Texas gubernatorial candidate Mark Tippets was told he didn't have enough qualifying press, in part because his coverage in the Spanish-language media didn't count.... Iowa governor candidate Jake Porter, who's polling higher than any other L.P. statehouse contender, says his debate invitations were rescinded, in part because he refused to buy commercials.

"'The freer and more general the competition,' Adam Smith wrote in 1776, the more 'advantageous' it will be to the public. Competitors, he warned, will 'always' try 'to widen the market and to narrow the competition.' For too long we have allowed our system of government, that other glorious achievement from 1776, to be controlled by the market-rigging forces Smith warned us about. It's about time to make American politics competitive again."

Read more: https://reason.com/reasontv/2018/10/26/how-third-parties-being-screwed-this-ele
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The book Justin Amash wants Trump to read

On Twitter, Justin Amash offered Trump a free book. Here’s what the president would learn if he read it - Erin Dunne, Beltway Confidential, Washington Examiner:

August 29, 2018 - "On Tuesday, Trump tweeted, 'I smile at Senators and others talking about how good free trade is for the U.S. What they don’t say is that we lose Jobs and over 800 Billion Dollars a year on really dumb Trade Deals… and the same countries Tariff us to death. These lawmakers are just fine with this!'

"In response, Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., offered Trump a free copy of an economics book. That book, Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt, is ... not very long but chock-full of excellent advice explained simply. I agree with Amash; the president, if he ever took a break from Twitter, would do well to read it.

"The one lesson the book’s title touts is deceptively simple: 'The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all other groups'.... Actions have consequences both in the short and long-term and for groups beyond those directly implicated....

"Even if Trump didn’t get beyond that first introduction, that simple lesson might give him pause before engaging in all out-trade wars with just about every country he can think of. But should the president be inclined to read more than two sentences, he might do well to open to the chapter on tariffs, given his apparently fondness for them.

"That chapter outlines, first in the words of Adam Smith, the inherent benefit of free trade. Quoting Smith, Hazlitt explains, 'In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest.' Free international trade makes the production, trade and distribution of those goods possible to the benefit of all.

"But tariffs cut into all of that benefit by making goods more expensive. Sure, a tariff might protect a specific industry and specific jobs, but it does not help the economy overall. Because consumers have to pay more for one product, they necessarily have to spend less elsewhere. As explained in that chapter, 'In order that one industry might grow or come into existence, a hundred other industries would have to shrink. In order that 50,000 persons might be employed in [one] industry, 50,000 fewer people would be employed elsewhere.'

"In short, Trump is wrong; the U.S. is not losing jobs or money by engaging in free trade. On the contrary, free trade is making all products cheaper, creating new opportunities and boosting overall efficiency. Tariffs only restructure the economy and reduce real wages and wealth, because they cause efficiency and production to decline as materials and products become more expensive. In the end, that will hurt everyone, even the industries that the tariffs propose to protect....

"Trump would do well to take a walk over to Amash’s office and take him up on the offer of a free book [or] if Trump is too busy to walk over, there is also a free PDF copy of this very book available online from the Foundation for Economic Education. Happy reading!"

Read more: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/on-twitter-justin-amash-offered-trump-a-free-book-heres-what-the-president-would-learn-if-he-read-it#!
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The story behind Estonia's economic miracle

How Estonia—Yes, Estonia—Became One of the Wealthiest Countries in Eastern Europe - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - by Luis Pablo de la Horra:

March 23, 2018 - "The question of why some countries are rich and prosperous whereas others seem to be condemned to the scourge of poverty has been around for centuries. Many factors have been argued to be the determinants of prosperity.... Yet, since at least the publication in 1776 of The Wealth of Nations, we know that ...  Free trade, a reliable legal framework that protects private property and enforces contracts, and sound money are necessary conditions for countries to thrive.... Estonia is a paradigmatic example...

"On Aug. 20, 1991, Estonia gained its independence after 51 years under the yoke of communism. The country was first occupied by the Red Army in June 1940...  One year later, the Nazi Army invaded the Soviet Union, occupying Estonia until 1944, when the Soviets retook the country. The political instability in the Soviet Union during the early 90s precipitated the restoration of democracy in the Baltic country.

"From day one, the new government committed to undertaking market-oriented reforms that ... included monetary reform, the creation of a free-trade zone, a balanced budget, the privatization of state-owned companies, and the introduction of a flat-rate income tax.... Mart Laar, Estonia’s Prime Minister during two periods: 1992-1994 and 1999-2002 ...has claimed that he took inspiration from Milton Friedman’s bestseller'Free to Choose....

"These reforms paved the way for the incredible rise in living standards that Estonia has experienced..... Today, Estonia is considered a high-income country... The purchasing power of Estonians has increased 400 percent over the last two decades.... In addition, life expectancy has moved from 66 years in 1994 to 77 years in 2016.....

"Government finances are healthy ... public debt is only 9.5 percent of GDP. In terms of the labor market, Estonia’s unemployment rate is 5.3 percent, well below the EU average. Finally, its efficient and attractive corporate tax system (undistributed profits aren’t taxed) has placed Estonia as a worldwide center for high-tech companies, boosting foreign investments and economic growth....

"In terms of PPP-adjusted income, Estonia ranks first ahead of countries such as Russia or Latvia and well above the median income. The picture is similar when it comes to other indicators like life expectancy or infant mortality rate, where Estonia shows that economic progress has a real impact on the living standards of people.

"Estonia is the living example that human progress is closely linked to economic freedom.... The only thing we can do is to spread the word so that all countries have the opportunity to improve their living standards like Estonia did in the early 1990s."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/how-estonia-yes-estonia-became-one-of-the-wealthiest-countries-in-eastern-europe/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=push_notification
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Capitalism was built on ideas, not capital

The Great Enrichment Was Built on Ideas, Not Capital - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - Deirdre N. McCloskey:

November 22, 2017 - "The ... modern world was made not by material causes, such as coal or thrift or capital or exports or exploitation or imperialism or good property rights or even good science, all of which have been widespread in other cultures and other times. It was made by ideas from and about the bourgeoisie — by an explosion after 1800 in technical ideas and a few institutional concepts, backed by a massive ideological shift toward market-tested betterment, on a large scale at first peculiar to northwestern Europe.

"What made us rich are the ideas backing the system — usually but misleadingly called modern 'capitalism' — in place since the year of European political revolutions, 1848. We should call the system  'trade-tested progress.' Or maybe 'innovationism'?...

"The upshot of the new ideas has been a gigantic improvement since 1848 for the poor.... The greatly enriched world cannot be explained in any deep way by the accumulation of capital, despite what economists from the blessed Adam Smith through Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty have believed, and as the very word 'capitalism' seems to imply. The word embodies a scientific mistake.

"Our riches did not come from piling brick on brick, or bachelor’s degree on bachelor’s degree, or bank balance on bank balance, but from piling idea on idea. The bricks, B.A.s, and bank balances — the 'capital' accumulations — were of course necessary. But ... [s]uch materialist ways and means are too common in world history and, as explanation, too feeble....

"The bettering ideas arose in northwestern Europe from a novel liberty and dignity that was slowly extended to all commoners (though admittedly we are still working on the project), among them the bourgeoisie. The new liberty and dignity resulted in a startling revaluation by the society as a whole of the trading and betterment in which the bourgeoisie specialized. 

"The revaluation was derived not from some ancient superiority of the Europeans but from egalitarian accidents in their politics between Luther’s Reformation in 1517 and the American Constitution and the French Revolution in 1789. The Leveller Richard Rumbold, facing his execution in 1685, declared, 'I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.' Few in the crowd gathered to mock him would have agreed. A century later, many would have. By now, almost everyone.

"Along with the new equality came another leveling idea, countering the rule of aristocrat or central planner: a 'Bourgeois Deal.' In the first act, let a bourgeoise try out in the marketplace her proposed betterment, such as window screens or alternating-current electricity or the little black dress.... [C]ompetitors will imitate her success, driving down the price of screens, electricity, and dresses. But if the society lets her in the first act have a go, enriching her for a while, then, by the third act, the payoff from the deal is that she will make you all rich....

 "In other words, what mattered were two levels of ideas: the ideas for the betterments themselves (the electric motor, the airplane, the stock market), dreamed up in the heads of the new entrepreneurs drawn from the ranks of ordinary people; and the ideas in the society at large about such people and their betterments — in a word, liberalism, in all but the modern American sense."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/the-great-enrichment-was-built-on-ideas-not-capital/
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The contractarian libertarian

Libertarianism and contractarianism - The Washington Post - John Thrasher, The Volokh Conspiracy:

September 20, 2017 - "Liberalism (in the classical sense) and its more austere cousin libertarianism, are fundamentally doctrines that put personal and political freedom at the heart of things ... typically understood as freedom from government and social interference so that one can exercise one’s freedom to live the life of one’s choosing. Equality is crucial in securing freedom insofar as we understand equality as equality of fundamental rights to non-interference....

"It is a commonplace to argue, as Thomas Nagel did in an early review of Robert Nozick’s epoch-making Anarchy, State, and Utopia, that the libertarian and classical liberal focus on rights is 'without foundations.' Although this criticism is fundamentally mistaken, it is an unsurprising allegation given the preferred intuitionistic method of many of the most important philosophical libertarians....

"I argue that libertarians and liberals should embrace a contractual method of justification.... The core rights that define the freedom and equality of members of a free society are or would be, on this view, the result of an agreement between rational individuals for the purpose of mutual benefit....

"[T]he state of nature and contractual consent are not accurate descriptions of the history of political organization. This criticism, however, misunderstands the basic idea behind social contract theory: to model how a genuinely voluntary and mutually beneficial society would be structured.... The social contract acts as a tool to evaluate existing and possible social rules and institutions.

"Contractual theory, pursued this way, aims to bring the mutually beneficial power of market exchange to social governance. But ... David Gauthier notes in Morals by Agreement, 'before Smith’s invisible hand can do its beneficent work, Hobbes’s war of every man against every man must first be exorcized' (85). Markets require a foundation in basic norms of trust and the assurance that one’s rights are secure. This requires, at least initially, credible enforcement and governance mechanisms. This governance can be achieved in any number of ways, however, not all of which require explicit political institutions.... Indeed, the long-term project of the libertarian contractarian should be to investigate how forms of genuine self-government can realize, in modern societies, the contractarian goals of voluntariness and mutual benefit....

""The contractual approach helps to solve two perennial problems in libertarian and liberal theory ... the foundational problem of whether to base libertarian conclusions on some deontological basis (e.g., natural rights) or to adopt a consequentialist justification [and] how to adjudicate between the anarchist and minimal government strands in libertarian thought....

"[T]he contractual approach preserves a focus on the consequences of political institutions that many find appealing in consequentialist or utilitarian theory....  Similarly, the contractual method, based on rational agreement, provides a justification for rights that doesn’t rely on controversial foundations. This, as I argue more fully in Social Contractarianism, makes the contractual approach uniquely attractive....

"I also argue that the contractual approach can dissolve another traditional dispute between classical liberals and libertarians; whether ... libertarians are really committed to anarchism.... The contractual libertarian can admit that there is no moral obligation or duty to obey the state, but that in a free and open society with institutions that can meet the contractual test, there are good reasons to endorse the laws and social norms of such a society....

"Agreement is the only basis of a free society. These agreements must be voluntary and reflect our perceived interests. A society built on this model would be as close to a truly voluntary society as we could ever hope."

Read more: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.ca/2017/10/libertarianism-and-contractarianism.html
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Guatemala's free-market university

The Bond villain libertarians of Guatemala - Don Hannan, Washington Examiner:

December 19, 2016 - "Hidden away in Guatemala, surrounded by tall jungle trees, ... Francisco Marroquin University has been turning out free-marketeers for 45 years....

"The buildings are named after F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and other Austrian School economists. There is a Plaza Adam Smith... One of the buildings is adorned with a massive sculpture of Atlas holding the world aloft — a homage to that vinegary anti-collectivist Ayn Rand. She would have approved of the way that lecturers must bid for teaching aids according to an internal market, with prices rising at popular times.

"Francisco Marroquin — named after the first Bishop of Guatemala, who translated several of the indigenous languages — is one of the best universities in Latin America. Its fees are at the upper end of the range, and it sets stiff entrance criteria, including a required fluency in English. All its undergraduates, whether they are studying law, medicine or architecture, are given a basic grounding in the principles of personal liberty and limited government....

"What makes Francisco Marroquin unusual is not that it seeks to inculcate values. Rather, it's that those values are not the leftist ones prevalent in almost every other institution of higher education. Instead of promoting anti-racism as the supreme political value, Francisco Marroquin promotes freedom. Safe spaces, micro-aggressions and trigger warnings have no place in these handsome buildings. Students are constantly exhorted to think for themselves....

"The free-market liberalism taught here has a samizdat feel. Most undergraduates are as opposed to the big-government paternalism that passes for conservatism in Latin America as they are to the Left.

"Which is why the best hope for the region lies in these young people. With the partial exceptions of Chile and Colombia, open markets have never really been tried in Latin America.... Latin America's underlying problem remains unaddressed.

"Governments are simultaneously too large and too small. Too large in the sense that they aim to control industries, dictate wages, set prices. Too small in the sense that they fail to operate impartial legal systems through which private citizens can claim redress....

"Just as the London School of Economics educated a generation of post-colonial leaders in Asia and Africa, with dire consequences, so there is now a crying need in Latin America for leaders who understand the difference between being pro-business and being pro-market. Every alternative has failed."

Read more: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-bond-villain-libertarians-of-guatemala/article/2609902
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One great idea and two bad ones

Nationalism and Socialism Are Very Bad Ideas - Reason.com - Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Reason:

February 2017 - "Between the Great Lisbon Earthquake [1755] and the revolutionary year of 1848 the European chattering classes had three big ideas. One was very, very good. The other two were very, very bad. We're still paying.

"The good one, flowing from the pens of such members of the clerisy as Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and above all the Blessed Adam Smith, is what Smith described in 1776 as the shocking idea of 'allowing every man [or woman, dear] to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice'....

"The boldness of commoners pursuing their own interests resulted in a Great Enrichment — a rise in Europe and the Anglosphere of real, inflation-corrected incomes per head, from 1800 to the present, by a factor, conservatively measured, of about 30. That is, class, about 3,000 percent.... And now, despite the best efforts of governments and international agencies to bungle the job, liberalism is spreading to the world, from Hong Kong to Botswana....

"The two bad ideas of 1755–1848 were nationalism and socialism.... Nationalism, when first theorized in the early 19th century, was entwined with the Romantic movement, though of course in England it was already hundreds of years old.

"What is bad about nationalism, aside from its intrinsic collective coercion, is that it inspires conflict. The 800 U.S. military bases around the world keep the peace by waging endless war, bombing civilians to protect Americans from non-threats on the other side of the world. In July 2016, we of the Anglosphere 'celebrated,' if that is quite the word, the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, a fruit of nationalism, which by its conclusion three and a half months later had cost the Allies and the Central Powers combined over a million casualties, most of them dismembered by artillery....

"The other bad idea of the era was socialism, which can also be linked to Romanticism, and to a secularized Christianity.... What's bad about socialism, aside from its own intrinsic collective coercion, is that it leads to poverty. Even in its purest forms — within the confines of a sweet family, say — it kills initiative and encourages free riding.... The not-so-sweet forms of socialism, especially those paired with nationalism, are a lot worse. Thus North Korea, Cuba, and other workers' paradises. As the joke goes, 'Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism it's the other way around.'

"What to do? Revive liberalism, as the astonishing successes of China and India have. Take back the word from our friends on the American left. They can keep progressive, if they don't mind being associated with the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, and its eugenic enthusiasms for forced sterilization and for using the minimum wage to drive immigrants, blacks, and women out of the labor force.....

"Read Adam Smith, slowly — not just the prudential Wealth of Nations, but its temperate sister The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And return in spirit to the dawn of 1776, when the radical idea was not nationalism or socialism or national socialism, but 'the obvious and simple system of natural liberty' that allows all men and women to pursue their interests in their own ways."

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2017/01/26/three-big-ideas
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Spontaneous order in Pokemon GO

The Libertarian Economic Theory That Might Be Secretly Driving Pokémon Go | Atlas Obscura - Ernie Smith:

July 25, 2016 - "[T]he biggest non-politics story at the moment — the phenomenal rise of Pokémon Go — is seen by some libertarians as a validation of a philosophy that's key to their economic ideals: spontaneous order, the idea that in a world of chaos, order eventually organizes itself.

"The philosophy is closely associated with Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, and borrows some ideas from the 'invisible hand' theory espoused by fellow economist Adam Smith.

"The theory basically follows as such: If you do nothing to set order or regulate flow, order will eventually show itself. By forcing order onto a structure, however, you limit possibilities and outcomes, and the weight of the system eventually falls over on itself. Here's how Hayek puts it in his landmark 1974 Nobel Prize speech, 'The Pretense of Knowledge,' which argues against heavy social engineering of economic structures:

In the physical sciences there may be little objection to trying to do the impossible.... But in the social field the erroneous belief that the exercise of some power would have beneficial consequences is likely to lead to a new power to coerce other men being conferred on some authority. Even if such power is not in itself bad, its exercise is likely to impede the functioning of those spontaneous ordering forces by which, without understanding them, man is in fact so largely assisted in the pursuit of his aims. 

"So, where does Pokémon Go fit into this?

"To put it simply, the design of the game is very hands-off, and its growth is basically pushed forward by the use of spontaneous social systems.

"''The game provides the opportunity for building social institutions, but it’s the actions of the individuals in the game that build it, forming a beautiful spontaneous order "of human action, not human design",' argues Tyler Groenendal of the Acton Institute.

"Young Americans for Liberty, a Ron Paul-affiliated nonprofit that brings together millennials who get excited about laissez-faire economic theory, has recommended the game as a perfect activity for its loose network of chapters.

"''You can find classical liberal ideas playing out in the real world every which way you look, even in your games,' the group's Derek Spicer writes. 'Pokémon Go is just one in the litany of examples of how spontaneous order affects how we play video games.'

"The question is, of course, whether the broader public will make that connection. Or even Pokémon Go players specifically, who already know plenty about chaos."

Read more: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-libertarian-economic-theory-that-might-be-secretly-driving-pokemon-go
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Thatcher an accidental libertarian heroine

Margaret Thatcher: An Accidental Libertarian Heroine » Spectator Blogs - Alex Massie:

April 10, 2013 - "Mrs Thatcher, of course, was a great economic liberal. Her approach to economics, guided by Smith, Hayek and Friedman, stressed the importance of individual endeavour. Remove the dead hand of state control and Britain could flourish again. The many individual invisible hands of the market would improve our collective lot....

"And she was right. As a Manchester Liberal, Thatcher appreciated the power and value of economic liberty. Slowly, if unevenly, the impact of an era of market forces and economic liberalisation have been felt across the globe. Millions, even billions, have benefited from the more efficient allocation of capital. In Asia, Latin America and even (to some extent) Africa, market forces and liberal economic policies have worked. If the journey is not yet complete, we still inhabit a world transformed....

"Mrs Thatcher was a social conservative. But one part of her legacy that is perhaps under-appreciated is the extent to which her triumph on the economic front contributed to her defeat in the social arena.... Margaret Thatcher’s economic libertarianism (if it can so be called) would eventually advance the cause of social libertarianism as well. That she would have disapproved of this matters little; it is part of her legacy too. And a welcome one."

Read more: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/alex-massie/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-an-accidental-libertarian-heroine/
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