It would be convenient to point to specific events in history which caused the cards to tumble in 2008 but this would not be realistic. The most honest way to determine the cause(s) of the crash(es) is to look at what actually happened. In a nutshell, the effects of overpriced […]
At an economics convention I attended some time ago, one of the attendees attempted to convince me that the primary reason for the decline in the aggregate U.S. economy was a reduction in domestic manufacturing. “We don’t make anything anymore,” he told me. This is a very common fallacy which […]
Free trade is an interesting phenomenon. Considering it in the literal sense, one would think that free trade meant the unrestricted trade of goods without tariffs, taxes, quotas, or other arbitrary restrictions. Unfortunately, the term “free” has been hijacked at some point in our history and now means “not quite […]
I generally despise receiving forwarded emails. More often than not they include six pages of email addresses the message was previously sent to and then a very short message about how I need to forward this on to my friends or suffer pain and torture for the rest of eternity. […]
What is America? What does it stand for? The most common description given for the United States involves some form of the ideas of liberty and justice for all men. But what does this actually mean? Are these purely subjective or can they be objectively measured? And most importantly, are […]
Previously I discussed and refuted the most common defenses for government legitimacy. However, some people have avoided the burden of proof completely by claiming that the question of government legitimacy itself is not even a valid issue. This appeal ad populum is essentially based on a false dichotomy. They claim […]
Previously, we discussed the negative stigma attached to questioning one’s government. The question we did not address, however, was the validity of the government to begin with. What makes the existing government legitimate? Why must we follow the laws and regulations decreed by men unknown to us? It is safe […]
To question one’s government – at least in the more “advanced” nations of the world – is often labeled as unpatriotic and ignorant. Government has been morphed into an entity towards which most people turn in times of strife and uncertainty. The common cry is for the government to “do […]
According to Wikipedia, money is “any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context.” Emphasis should be placed on the exchange function of money since it is that role alone which creates the need […]
