January 2017
ARE GOVERNMENT REGULATORS MORE VIRTUOUS THAN EVERYONE ELSE? – Iván Carrino
ARE GOVERNMENT REGULATORS MORE VIRTUOUS THAN EVERYONE ELSE? - Iván Carrino - In their new book, Phishing for Phools, Nobel-prize winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller use a behavioral economics approach to criticize the “manipulation and deception” that can exist between businesses and consumers. According to Shiller, [a] fundamental concept [...]
TEN FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF ECONOMICS – Antony Mueller
TEN FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF ECONOMICS -Antony Mueller- In the midst of so many economic fallacies being repeatedly seemingly without end, it may be helpful to return to some of the most basic laws of economics. Here are ten of them that bear repeating again and again. Production precedes consumption. Although it [...]
December 2016
THE SOVEREIGN INDIVIDUAL – Helio Beltrão
THE SOVEREIGN INDIVIDUAL - Helio Beltrão - [This Libertas Award acceptance speech was delivered at the XXIII Forum da Liberdade, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on April 12, 2010.] President [Leonardo] Fração, it is a pleasure to be here, at this XXIII Forum da Liberdade, whose theme is based on Ludwig [...]
THE VALUES OF CAPITALISM (II): IN PRAISE OF HARD WORK – Miguel Anxo Bastos Boubeta
THE VALUES OF CAPITALISM (II): IN PRAISE OF HARD WORK - Miguel Anxo Bastos Boubeta - Capitalism implies a work ethic and a positive vision thereof. Anticapitalists ideologies used to denigrate the values associated with work. Booklets such as The right to be lazy of Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue [...]
PUBLIC HEALTH CARE AND ECONOMIC CALCULATION – Ignacio Almará
PUBLIC HEALTH CARE AND ECONOMIC CALCULATION - Ignacio Almará - The economic crisis has reignited a controversial issue: the debate on budget cuts in health care. In Spain, this debate has filled the newspaper’s headings for the last eight years. The most recent example could be the announcement made by the [...]
INNOVATION AND THE STATE – Oscar Rodríguez Carreiro
INNOVATION AND THE STATE - Oscar Rodríguez Carreiro - It is commonly believed that innovation is a key aspect of economic development that needs State support given some of its special characteristics (basically because it is said to be a public good affected by externalities), for instance in the form of subsidies [...]
AN UNINTENTIONAL HOMAGE TO DESPOTISM – Daniel Rodríguez Carreiro
AN UNINTENTIONAL HOMAGE TO DESPOTISM -Daniel Rodríguez Carreiro- Last April the news broke that the Austrian government was about to expropriate the building where Adolf Hitler was born with the objective of preventing it from becoming a pilgrimage site for Nazism supporters. All sale offers had been rejected as insufficient by [...]
November 2016
THE FREE TRADE TRADITION IN GALICIA SEEN TROUGH THE AGRARIAN PRESS – Miriam González Francisco
THE FREE TRADE TRADITION IN GALICIA SEEN TROUGH THE AGRARIAN PRESS - Miriam González Francisco - They were strange times, times of decadence and exasperation, and also of “Desastres” when the 20th century arrived at the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. Galicia had suffered from the agrarian crisis at the turn of the [...]
IS AN EDUCATIVE SYSTEM NECESSARY? – Miguel Alonso Davila
IS AN EDUCATIVE SYSTEM NECESSARY? - Miguel Alonso Davila - From time to time, the implementation of a new school curriculum gives rise to controversies in which we can find all kind of arguments and positions: the current school curriculum is obsolete because it was created to satisfy the demands of [...]
SOME ISSUES ABOUT ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS: A REPLY TO F. CAPELLA – Daniel R.Carreiro
SOME ISSUES ABOUT ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS: A REPLY TO F. CAPELLA - Daniel R.Carreiro - Francisco Capella wrote recently an article entitled “Más problemas del anarcocapitalismo” (More problems of anarcho-capitalism) after attending a debate between Juán Ramón Rallo and Miguel Anxo Bastos. The article of Capella suffers from a certain vagueness about the [...]
THE WICKED MORALS OF PROVIDING CHARITY WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY – María Marty
THE WICKED MORALS OF PROVIDING CHARITY WITH OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY - María Marty - Imagine this scenario- you return home after a hard day of work, ready to enjoy a well-deserved rest and those nice things that you could buy with the money earned with your effort. After a while, you heard [...]
October 2016
PRAXEOLOGY AND MEDICINE – Ignacio Almará
PRAXEOLOGY AND MEDICINE - Ignacio Almará - Essentially, medicine is about health and sickness. These seem simple enough concepts but, what do they really mean? If we ask a professional we might receive an ambiguous answer, which is understandable since consistent definitions of these terms are not even given at Medical Schools. [...]
THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM – Miguel Alonso Davila
THE IMMIGRATION PROBLEM - Miguel Alonso Davila - As is currently the case with the refugee crisis in Europe, every now and then news appears in the media reminding us of the large numbers of people crowded together at specific locations of our borders, close to them or at neighboring countries, from [...]
WHAT IS ANARCHO-CAPITALISM? – Daniel R.Carreiro
WHAT IS ANARCHO-CAPITALISM? - Daniel R.Carreiro - Someone forced to work for another person is a slave. His master may be kind, generous and even grant him a large number of goods and services, but that does not change the fact that the person forced to work is still under the yoke [...]
PRAXEOLOGY: THE METHOD OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL – Óscar R. Carreiro
PRAXEOLOGY: THE METHOD OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL - Óscar R. Carreiro - Praxeology is the distinctive method of the Austrian School of Economics. This term, first coined by Ludwig von Mises, means “the science of action”. Praxeology takes as its starting-point the action axiom, which says, simply, that man acts. Acting [...]
THE VALUES OF CAPITALISM (I): THRIFT – Miguel Anxo Bastos Boubeta
THE VALUES OF CAPITALISM (I): THRIFT - Miguel Anxo Bastos Boubeta - It’s a common belief that capitalism is an economic system which arises from, and at the same time foster, consumerist values. Nothing could be further from the truth. Capitalism, both for its origin as well as for its daily [...]
