The young woman looked frightened. All I did was ask some pointed questions. “Why do you have 35 kinds of energy bars, but only one brand of straight pins? And why are those made in China? Why aren’t your pins made in America?” This Kerr drug store was the final stop of my ten “observations,” so I had […]
Read MoreIn their new book, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century—Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come,1 James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus predict America’s future by looking deep into the past. They argue that the unique nuclear-family orientation inherited from the Anglo-Saxon tradition creates a culture that ultimately will reject the model […]
Read MoreA “middleman” buys cheap, sells dear, and does nothing to improve the product in the meantime. Middlemen are everywhere and probably have been since the very first exchanges started to improve the lives of primitive humans. Marco Polo and his family were middlemen. So is Ebay. Between them, in time and complexity, lie millions […]
Read MoreIntro by John Baden It is the exception that probes, not proves, the rule. I know of no logical system in which an exception to a general rule can “prove” the verity of that proposition, generality, principle, or rule. In this week’s FREE Insights, economist Michael Munger of Duke University describes an […]
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I often told my students that Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society” published in the American Economic Review in 1945 remains the most insightful economic article ever published. I read it once a year and always learn. Anyone who understands it well knows more about the economy and society than does the average Ph.D. […]
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