Mere Economics

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Latest — 01 Jul 2025

Meanwhile, in Somewhere, USA...

Henry Hazlitt reminds us that: 💡In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special

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Acton Advice

But it is not the popular movement, but the travelling of the minds of men who sit in the seat of Adam Smith that is really serious and worthy of attention. From Letters of Lord Acton to Lady Gladstone

Profits are Informative, Not Decisive

There are a lot of ways to make money that you probably shouldn’t pursue. Selling drugs to children, for example. Unfounded celebrity gossip. Pyramid schemes. Pornography. Economics can explain why these ventures are profitable, but it cannot determine whether these ventures are good. Similarly, physics can tell you what

In This House, We Believe Demand Curves Slope Downward to the Right VI

This series of posts is adapted from an essay originally published on my personal blog, A Fuller's Soap. During graduate school lecturing, a friend who I won’t name once joked, “We’ve covered downward sloping demand curves—what else is there to teach them?” Less flippantly, Armen

North Knowledge

Economic history is a depressing tale of miscalculation leading to famine, starvation, defeat in warfare, economic stagnation and decline, and indeed the disappearance of entire civilizations. From his Understanding the Process of Economic Change

In This House, We Believe Demand Curves Slope Downward to the Right V

This series of posts is adapted from an essay originally published on my personal blog, A Fuller's Soap. During graduate school lecturing, a friend who I won’t name once joked, “We’ve covered downward sloping demand curves—what else is there to teach them?” Less flippantly, Armen

Schlossberg Shrewdness

Christian love seeks to help the person but refuses to elevate the problem by giving it ontological status and worth. It also avoids helping the weak as a means of causing harm to the strong. In this it heeds the apostle’s admonition that love “does not rejoice at wrong,

Want to Feed the Multitudes?

The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics recently featured a small slice from Mere Economics. Here's a small slice of that small slice: Scarcity constrains us, but there is a path toward greater abundance. Let’s illustrate a powerful idea with just a little arithmetic. Suppose that in

Trade is Made of Win

That's a phrase my intrepid Mere Economics co-author likes to use. In our two most recent pieces for The Independent Institute, Scott Burns and I explain why it's therefore unfortunate that a word with negative connotations-deficit-got involved. Here's an excerpt from our piece on

Observations From a "No Kings" Protest

I wasn't planning to go, but some friends said they were going. So we made signs and joined in. As I've told everyone, the best thing about this sign is that I can use it again when the Democrats are back in power. Protectionism, sadly, is