Charging home owners’ association dues based on the size of the property is common practice in many places across the world. Is that economically efficient and is it equitable? The short answer to the question raised by reader Mr Baransam1… Read More ›
James Burke tells a story about a time when he and his team were lost in some place in Ireland. This was before Google maps and mobile phones. They asked a local for directions to some place who replied in… Read More ›
“A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does… Read More ›
Celebrated economist Thomas Schelling died today at the age of 95. He was the recipient of the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”. I note his passing because… Read More ›
Today, Sept 29th, is the 135th birthday of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). I consider Mises to be one of my gurus. Just to be sure, I used the word guru very seriously — one who dispels the darkness (gu) of… Read More ›
The economic growth of any economy depends on how much is invested in creating productive assets in it. Factories, buildings, ports, the transportation network, natural resource extraction, manpower training, the use of modern methods of manufacturing, energy production and distribution… Read More ›
This is a continuation of the brief piece about what’s wealth and where does it come from. Wealth, defined broadly, is important to us because it’s useful for our material well-being. Material well-being is not an end in itself but… Read More ›
10 million years ago, there was no wealth on earth Wealth comes from human action. It does not exist in nature although the ingredients from which wealth is derived through human action does exist in nature. A simple example illustrative… Read More ›
CNN has a nice graph showing the top oil producers of the world. Here’s the data for 2014 and 2015. You notice two things: the production trend is positive. That partly explains the downward trend in prices over the last… Read More ›
We take it as a given, almost a fact of nature like the seasons or the geography of continents, that different parts of the world enjoy different levels of prosperity. But there’s nothing “natural” about this since this is almost… Read More ›
