Commercial banks do not lend out other peoples’ money. On the contrary, banks create new money every time they make a loan.
MARKETS
Unleash the Swarm in Housing Production
If we unleash the swarm, if we restore freedom to property owners, we will see an immense increase in housing production. Property owners could convert single-family homes into duplexes, build a cottage or “granny flat” in the back yard, or do any number of other things to increase the supply of housing.
This Labor Day, Don’t Praise Labor Unions
This Labor Day, the real threat to election integrity isn’t at your polling place–it’s at your workplace.
Final Thoughts on the Uniformity of Profit Principle
The uniformity-of-profit principle describes a tendency, never an actually existing state of affairs.
Foreign Investment: Standard of Living and Capital Investment (1 of 5)
The amount of capital invested per unit of the population is greater in the so-called advanced nations than in the developing nations.
To Lower Rents Increase The Profits From Building Rental Housing
Housing activists think that the solution to the housing shortage is to shackle housing producers.
Inflation: Unemployment and Inflation (5 of 5)
In 1936, in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Lord Keynes unfortunately elevated this method--the emergency measures of the period between 1929 and 1933--to a principle, to a fundamental system of policy. And he justified it by saying, in effect:...
Inflation: Labor Unions and Wages (4 of 5)
If inflation is bad and if people realize it, why has it become almost a way of life in all countries? Even some of the richest countries suffer from this disease. The United States today is certainly the richest country in the world, with the highest standard of...
Profits and the Repeal of Price Controls & Government Subsidies
Farm subsidies are a way the government achieves artificially high prices. They are an illustration of legal minimum prices—that is, prices below which the government prevents the producers from selling.
Antitrust Lawsuit Against PGA is Unfounded
Eleven professional golfers, including Phil Mickelson, have filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the Professional Golf Association (PGA).
Inflation: John Maynard Keynes vs. The Gold Standard (3 of 5)
The government may think that inflation--as a method of raising funds--is better than taxation, which is always unpopular and difficult. In many rich and great nations, legislators have often discussed, for months and months, the various forms of new taxes that were...
An Unnecessary Evil: How Canada Ended Up Insuring Bank Deposits
If Canada’s relatively “free” banking system was so stable, why did the Canadian government establish the Bank of Canada in 1935? And why did it establish a Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC) some three decades later?
The Profit Motive as an Agent of Innovation and Progress, Part 2
The operation of the tendency toward a uniform rate of profit requires that high profits be made by continuously introducing productive innovations in advance of competitors.
Confusions about Capitalism
Three common accusations against capitalism are that it is exploitation, it is cronyism, and it destroys the planet.
The Lottery Life: Creating Lucky Housing Winners at the Expense of Everyone Else
End the “Lottery Life” in housing and watch market entrepreneurs do the rest.
The Profit Motive as an Agent of Innovation and Progress, Part 1
How the profit motive acts to make production steadily increase in a free market, and becomes an agent of continuous economic progress.
Inflation: The Myth of the “Price Level” (2 of 5)
When people talk of a "price level," they have in mind the image of a level of a liquid which goes up or down according to the increase or decrease in its quantity, but which, like a liquid in a tank, always rises evenly. But with prices, there is no such thing as a...
Inflation: An Increase in the Quantity of Money (1 of 5)
If the supply of caviar were as plentiful as the supply of potatoes, the price of caviar--that is, the exchange ratio between caviar and money or caviar and other commodities-would change considerably. In that case, one could obtain caviar at a much smaller...
A Case Study in Nuisance
Nuisance is highly contextual. An action that constitutes a nuisance in one context may not be a nuisance in another context.
Capitalism’s Visible Hand: Profit Seeking Benefits Consumers in a Free Market
The real advocates of the consumers—their virtual agents—are businessmen seeking profit, not the leaders of groups trying to restrict the freedom of businessmen to earn profits.
The Lust for Power and Tenant’s Rights
Economic power is founded on voluntary trade. Political power is founded on physical force.
Capitalism’s Visible Hand: Production for Profit is Production for Use
In total opposition to the misguided efforts of the Marxists to contrast production for profit with “production for use,” the fact is that production for profit is production for use.
Interventionism vs Capitalism: The Myth of the “Third-way” (4 of 4)
The idea that there is a third system — between socialism and capitalism, as its supporters say — a system as far away from socialism as it is from capitalism but that retains the advantages and avoids the disadvantages of each — is pure nonsense.
Rental Lease Options: Unattractive Alternatives Isn’t Force
We may not always like the alternatives that we face, but choosing between unattractive alternatives isn’t force.