Free Markets

Even students who already have a strong understanding of more advanced Austrian concepts should consider reading Hahn's Common Sense Economics, for it will strengthen their foundations in economic theory.

Although I have tried in this article to show how discussions of competition may be prevented from being misleading, it may often be best to emphasize instead the cooperation of the market, for this is the more fundamental feature of a capitalist order, and this is what competition on the free market promotes.

But the centrality of the knowledge-corrective character of the market process for both Mises and Hayek cannot seriously be doubted. Whatever the differences between a Hayekian articulation of the market process and a Misesian articulation, the centrality of the notion of the corrective process for both, is the crucially important circumstance.

"I have often been asked to add to my negative critique of Keynes's theory the positive exposition of an economic theory that offered a more correct explanation and description of economic reality. The present book is my answer to this request."

"Twenty-five percent of college-bound high-school students cannot name the ocean separating the United States from Asia. This happens despite the fact that education funding in the United States tripled from 1960 to 2000."

"The pensions/social security system is an intergenerational Ponzi scheme, the biggest scam ever invented."

Ayn Rand made the case for the freedom philosophy in the most aggressive manner possible, bless her. And, "capitalism" was a crucial element of that effort.

Men do well under a plan and its controls if the Gestalt to be accomplished makes sense, is not too distant, and offers rewards as well as challenges for different levels of skill. But this is quite different from a superimposed, infallible political philosophy which would urge on us an engineered society.

It is just a bit strange that companies would be, on the one hand, attacked for not providing enough in wages and, on the other, required to not provide any wages.

We've all encountered the rival theories Hunt is talking about here — the thinkers like Max Weber, who believed that the rise of liberalism was caused by the Puritan work ethic, the thinkers who believe that the rise of liberalism was made inevitable by Christian ideas about the individual soul, and so forth.When you're attempting to explain market processes, whether in the marketplace for goods and services or the marketplace of ideas, it's never that simple.