Art Carden

A Parable: Who Will Build the Roads?

The owners of private roads, those few in the know knew, would provide better roads at lower cost than Leviathan ever could.

Virginia Postrel’s “The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress” at 25

Dynamists and stasists have radically different visions of how the world works, or should work.

Why Isn’t Air Travel More Comfortable When It Easily Could Be?

Passengers aren’t willing to pay for it.

Cuba Demoted to “Not Real Socialism”

If Cuba is a workers’ paradise, why are so many people trying so hard to leave?

Julian Simon: The Ultimate Resource is The Human Mind

Each person born brings a mouth to feed and hands with which to scratch the ground, but most importantly, each new person brings a mind with which to have new ideas. The key, Simon argues, is freedom. When free minds are blessed with political and economic freedom, they can accomplish anything.

Let a Billion Preferences Bloom

There isn’t much room for diversity and dissent, however, when everything is decided politically. Mass customization and diversity are commercial society’s virtues. Mass regimentation and uniformity are political society’s vices. The stark contrast is clear in the proximity between Halloween and Election Day.

Google is Not a Coercive Monopoly

“Monopoly” means either “the only firm in an industry” or “a firm with explicit, government-granted privileges that prevent other people from competing with it.” Google doesn’t fit the bill.

“The Aristocracy of Pull” Meets Public Choice Theory: Randall Holcombe’s “Political Capitalism”

Holcombe mixes the theory of economic and political elites as it has been developed by political scientists and sociologists with Public Choice Theory to help us understand what Ayn Rand called “the aristocracy of pull” in Atlas Shrugged.

Abolish Agencies and Repeal Regulations That Hamper Medicine

Abolish the FDA. Repeal medical licensing.

Slavery Did Not Enrich Americans

Slavery was not necessary for cotton, and cotton was not necessary for industrialization. Had chattel slavery never taken hold in the United States, we would very likely be richer than we are today.

A May Day Remembrance

The inescapable conclusion of the Mises-Hayek argument about socialist calculation is that an efficient socialist society cannot be designed.

Why Does No Stockpile Adequate to Combat COVID-19 Exist?

Because nobody had an incentive to stockpile PPE or other medical equipment.

Empty Shelves Are Not a Result of Free Market Capitalism

The shelves aren’t empty because of free-market capitalism. They’re empty because of active interference with free-market capitalism.

The Capitalist Achievement and Music: How The Free Market Helps Us Live Like Kings

The capitalist achievement is progressive downward diffusion of things the rich and privileged take for granted that so many others couldn’t dream of.