Value and Exchange

Contrary to the popular way of thinking, setting in motion a consumption unbacked by production through monetary pumping will only stifle economic growth.

When a farmer leaves some unharvested crops in the field, they are not "wasted." Real waste would be found in efforts to use up every last physical resource, no matter how costly those efforts might be.

The idea that people are driven by fear of losses more than they are by the potential for gain has attained a sort of dogmatic adherence among behavioral economists. But there's a problem: the theory isn't true.

Jeff Deist pithily describes Taleb’s prose as “Rothbard meets Hayek.” But Taleb shares some ideas in common with Ludwig von Mises as well.

There is a growing drumbeat from some high-profile economists to reassure Americans that large increases in income and wealth taxes won’t distort labor markets. Yet much of their arguments are very misleading.

What makes a good a good is not the physical thing itself, but the value we find in it because it is serviceable toward some valued end.

In times of massive and frequent technological improvement, it would be sheer waste for manufacturers to dump resources into making products last past their usefulness.

When an elected official or government bureaucrat interferes with a valid, non-coerced exchange, they may appear to be helping one individual when they are actually harming a foundation of modern society; free exchange of goods and services.

Market prices reveal critical information about sellers, buyers, and market demand. But government interference in markets substitutes a fake version of reality that leads to impoverishment.

The free-market doctrine does not rest on an assumption that consumers make wise choices. Like the mythical “economic man,” the Perfectly Wise Individual is a straw man created by the critics of the theory.