Bardonomics

Image: YP Markets pervade our society. For transportation we have Uber, for living space Airbnb, and for tickets Stubhub. Even the right to pollute is for sale, at 13 Euros per metric ton of carbon dioxide on the European emissions market. Michael Sandel, the renowned Harvard University professor, complains, “We have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.” There are some who laud this expansion of market values. Libertarians believe markets promote individual freedom by allowing parties to engage in consensual and mutually beneficial agreements. The libertarian philosophy is that, as long as coercion is not involved, a trade of any sort will only occur if both parties stand to gain. Thus, any such trade should be permitted. An exception is made only for instances in which a deal beneficial to the transacting parties may harm a third party. For example, if my neighbors rented out their apartment to a nightclub, the ensuing late night noise wou...

Image: FMSC In discussions about development, foreign aid is heralded as a remedy for the severe poverty facing hundreds of millions around the world. International organizations often assert that aid is a tested path to success, and that the main problem with foreign aid is that there is not enough of it going around to alleviate the world’s problems.  Every humanitarian crisis leads to more urgent calls for aid money from organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. There are indeed some resounding success stories.  The Economist  recently noted that foreign aid transformed Taiwan and South Korea into prosperous nations, and that it essentially eliminated smallpox and polio.   Foreign aid is conceived with lofty and noble ideals. The defined objective of aid is to alleviate poverty and to put underdeveloped nations on a path to prosperity. There is consensus that aid should not be distributed with an underlying aim of advancing ...

Image: Shutterstock In 1930, famed economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes wrote that by the time of his “grandchildren’s generation,” people in the developed world would be working no more than 15 hours a week.  Keynes predicted that rapid advances in technology would lead to high levels of productivity and efficiency. The amount of human labor required to produce necessary goods and services would thus be greatly reduced.  He envisioned a world in which, instead of being occupied with dreary work, humans would seek fulfillment through exploring the arts and pursuing creative endeavors. Keynes was optimistic about the future, but the proposition of advanced technology also worried him.  Keynes’ concern was that increasingly productive technology would lead to what he called “technological unemployment.” With machines allowing fewer humans to produce more, it followed that overall employment would drop.  Such concerns have resonated for c...