Have we ever looked forward to year's end more than in 2020? It's certainly been a roller coaster of a year. And we simply cannot say often enough how grateful we are to have you along for the journey.
Next month, you can expect the rundown on the most engaging content we've published over the last year. I mean, who doesn't love a good list, right? For this month, we've given you a list below of some of our team's personal favorites from 2020. We'd love to hear yours!
As the weather turns cold for us here in the Midwest, we're thinking about what we'll read as we snuggle in with a warm cup of tea. You can look forward to some new #ReadWithMe series over the next several weeks. You might want to scroll back through this year's book reviews and Liberty Classics for some more inspiration. We hope you'll also revisit our senior sister site, the Online Library of Liberty (OLL), which just released a fresh new design. There are even more titles to peruse there... Nearly 2,000, in fact!
Until next month, we wish you well, and look forward to seeing you online. Please share your suggestions and comments with us at [email protected]. We love to hear from you.
Adam Smith on Capitalism and the Common Good by Eric W. Matson
To Smith, “common good capitalism” would seem redundant. Smith, of course, never used the word “capitalism”—that came with Karl Marx and his followers. But if we think about capitalism simply in terms of the private ownership of property, which includes a person’s ownership of her physical and human capital and the liberty to use that capital as she sees fit, the word can be reasonably mapped onto Smith’s thought. Read More.
Competition and Entrepreneurship:
The Fountainhead of the Contemporary Austrian School by Steven Horwitz
In Competition and Entrepreneurship, [Kirzner] characterizes that difference as a question of what a theory of the market should attempt to explain. Where mainstream microeconomics is concerned with identifying the combinations of prices and quantities that will produce equilibrium outcomes, the Austrian approach focuses on the interaction of the decisions of market participants and how they “generate the market forces that compel changes in prices, in outputs, and in methods of production and the allocation of resources.” Read More.
Of Kings, Keynes, and Capitalism
by Alberto Mingardi
"...the question “why should someone write another biography of Keynes” has a very clear answer: because Keynes had a tremendously interesting life, unmatched among economists before and after him." Read More.
Does Libertarianism Favor Labour?
by Arnold Kling
Intellectual historian Alberto Mingardi’s new biography of Thomas Hodgskin, Classical Liberalism and the Industrial Working Class, takes a different view of the 19th-century journalist and commentator. Mingardi argues that when understood in the context of his era, Hodgskin’s views were close to what we would today call libertarianism. Read More.
Highlights from EconLog
Thank you, Dr. Williams
by Jayme Lemke
Economics and liberty lost a great champion this past month in Walter Williams. Many members of the Econlib team were influenced by his teaching and scholarship. Below, EconLog's Jayme Lemke, a former student of Williams, reflects on his legacy and suggests some articles highlighting his body of work. Read More.
Economist and author Emily Oster of Brown University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the challenge of reopening schools in a pandemic. Oster has been collecting data from K-12 schools around the country. Her preliminary analysis finds little evidence that schools are super-spreaders of COVID. She argues that closing schools comes at a high cost for the students with little benefit in reducing the spread of the disease. Listen Here or watch the video on our YouTube Channel
