“And yet, most of us realize that there are huge differences between price rationing and government rationing, and that the latter is usually much worse for everyone….The rationing is, first of all, simply worse on a practical level: goods rationed by fiat rather than price have a tendency to disappear, decline in quality, etc. Government […]
Archive for the 'Communism' Category
Aug11th2009
Aug6th2008
Remember Hugo Chavez?
Published by in Communism, Economics, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and LatinAmerica. 9 CommentsWondering what he has been up to? The New York Times keeps us informed:
President Hugo Chávez is using his decree powers to enact a set of socialist-inspired measures that seem based on a package of constitutional changes that voters rejected last year. His actions open a new stage of confrontation between his government and […]
Mar12th2008
The Age Of Milton Friedman
Published by in Capitalism, Communism, Economics and General. 11 CommentsHarvard economist Andrei Shleifer has a new paper on The Age Of Milton Friedman that begins with:
The last quarter century has witnessed remarkable progress of mankind. The world’s per capita inflation-adjusted income rose from $5400 in 1980 to $8500 in 2005.Schooling and life expectancy grew rapidly, while infant mortality and poverty […]
Jan5th2008
Milton Friedman Debates Naomi Klein
Published by in Capitalism, Communism, Economics and General. 0 Comments
And one that only Youtube can bring.
Link via CD.
Nov6th2007
The Economics Of Vouchers
Published by in Capitalism, Communism, Economics, Education, General and Vouchers. 0 CommentsExplained by my favorite economic blogger, Megan McArdle blogging at The Atlantic:
One thing that strikes me about the arguments I’ve been having with voucher opponents is just how little they seem to understand how markets work. Markets don’t work because they get it right the first time; they succeed because if at first they don’t […]
May9th2007
Capitalism Vs. Others - A Discussion
Published by in Capitalism, Communism, Debates, Economics, General and Personal. 16 CommentsThis post is a continuation of the discussion between me and tin that started here and continued here.
Let me start the discussion with some definitions. I define communism, or more generally collectivism, as any economic system that exhibits the following criteria,
1. Little to no property rights
2. little to no free trade
3. the means of production […]
Feb5th2007
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good […]
Feb1st2007
“What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system” –Milton Friedman
Jan30th2007
Quote Of The Day
Published by in Books, Communism, Economics, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and LatinAmerica. 8 Comments“Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, many defenders of socialism have argued that dictators, including Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot, were aberrations; they took Marx’s ideas in the wrong direction. They claim that nationalization of the means of production (call it communism, socialism, or Marxism) and democracy can be compatible. In The Road to […]
Jan23rd2007
“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.” –Milton Friedman
Jan22nd2007
“One’s initial surprise at finding that intelligent people tend to be socialists diminishes when one realises that, of course, intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence, and to suppose that we must owe all the advantages and opportunities that our civilisation offers to deliberate design rather than to traditional rules, and likewise to suppose that […]
Jan10th2007
Time To Pray For The Citizens Of Venezuela
Published by in Communism, Economics, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues), LatinAmerica and Personal. 13 CommentsI don’t pray very often but there are times when events are so catastrophic, so desparate, and so predictable that prayer is in order and Venezuela has reached that point. While Hugo Chavez is big on socialist rhetoric, he has always been very short on actual implementation.
James Surowiecki, the financial columnist for the New Yorker, […]
Dec13th2006
The Difference A Dictator Makes
Published by in Capitalism, Communism, Economics, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and LatinAmerica. 15 CommentsWith the recent death of Pinochet, Chile’s former dictator, it is a good time to stop and compare two ideologically opposed dictators - Chile’s Pinochet vs Cuba’s Castro/Che.
The Washington Post writes:
A Dictator’s Double Standard
Augusto Pinochet tortured and murdered. His legacy is Latin America’s most successful country.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006; Page A26
AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who […]
Oct14th2006
“Chinese Communists have persecuted Christians since taking power in 1949. (Communists do that; they kill and imprison Christians whenever possible, but are rarely condemned for these actions by leftist journalists and historians anywhere.) Those Catholics loyal to the papal see were forced underground, and their numbers today may be as high as 10 million. In […]
Oct12th2006
“Leftism has many of the trappings of religion, which is why Marx was so hostile to religion. He knew that religion is a competitor to the socialism he advocated. Each is a comprehensive doctrine. Each exhausts cognitive, conative, and affective space. To the extent that people are religious, they are not receptive to socialism; and […]
Oct10th2006
“In practice, communism is nothing less than sheer barbarism that makes even the horrors of Naziism pale in comparison. Professor Rudolph J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii outlines that barbarism in his book “Death by Government,” a comprehensive detailing of the roughly 170 million people murdered by their own governments during the 20th century. […]
