What do you want to be when you grow up? was a question that adults regularly posed to all of us when we were young. Generally, even as children, we imagined ourselves becoming like those whose accomplishments we respected or whose qualities we admired. At...
In 2011 an economist by the name of Mariana Mazzucato, a graduate of the New School in New York, published a brief monograph for the British think tank Demos. The title of her work, later turned into a book, shortly became a catchword well beyond...
I’ve rarely seen it put so bluntly as I have in the video posted below, in an interview with epidemiologist Paul Elliott. However, I have begun to suspect that this error has crept into the thinking of the lockdowners over the course of the summer. It...
In 2011 an economist by the name of Mariana Mazzucato, a graduate of the New School in New York, published a brief monograph for the British think tank Demos. The title of her work, later turned into a book, shortly became a catchword well beyond...
Liberal individualism is often interpreted as an ideology based on the belief that individuals are atomistic egoists, each of whom single-mindedly pursues only maximum material gain and sensual satisfaction for himself or herself. Each person, in this interpretation, engages with people outside of his or...
On March 28 – very early in the pandemic – AIER published an article that I felt at the time received far too little attention. “Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown” by economists Audrey and Thomas Duncan cited...
(Don Boudreaux) TweetNear the end of my latest column for AIER I identify the deranged creature driving and cheering Covid-19 lockdowns. Worse even than homo economicus, this creature – homo avoidcovidus – is pathologically single-minded and real. A slice: While economists often use homo economicus as a simplifying...
Image credit: istockAnalysis and Commentaryvia EconLogWhat’s the appeal to people? Obviously I agree with you when you talk about a liberal society being a good one. The idea of intellectual or ideological pluralism, I’m all in. But people who are saying, “That’s a false front for...
(Don Boudreaux) TweetThomas Sowell believes that Donald Trump is a lesser evil than is Joe Biden. Ilya Somin believes that Joe Biden is a lesser evil than is Donald Trump. John Cochrane offers a detailed analysis of a report on Biden’s economic plan. Raymond Niles rightly bemoans the...
A romantic view of democracy is that it gives citizens control over their governments. Citizens decide who hold power, and if those who are elected do not carry out the will of the voters, democratic elections provide the mechanism to replace them. Elections provide the...