“Capitalists Keep Housing Scarce So They Can Rake in More Profits”
I cannot recall the source, but I remember seeing an Instagram video which claimed that the many abandoned housing units in New York is a result of landlords and investors trying to keep housing scarce so they can increase their profits. The shortage of housing probably has less to do with capitalist greed than it does with government regulation. Thomas Sowell argues that one reason you see so many abandoned dwelling units in places like New York City is because of their rent control laws. New York City has had rent control laws for longer than any other big city in the United States and it is littered with abandoned dwelling units. Instead of developers intentionally restricting the supply of housing (which does not make sense because why would they build the housing in the first place), Sowell writes that “…many buildings have been abandoned after their owners found it impossible to collect enough rent to cover the costs of services that they are required by law to provide” (p. 44). Sowell estimates that the number of empty dwellings in New York City greatly outnumber the thousands of homeless people live in the streets; which is purely a result of government regulation.
Reference
Thomas Sowell (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th Ed.). Basic Books.
The Persecution of Successful Minorities
Some people find it concerning when a minority group becomes too successful. The false belief that different groups would be equally represented and successful in all human endeavors if it were not for some form of injustice fuels envy and conspiracies to justify persecuting minorities. This phenomenon has occurred against many different groups throughout the world. Peter Bauer (1976) writes that in the past, resentment toward minorities has led to “…the persecution and expulsion of ethnic minorities, particularly those which have achieved prosperity from poverty—[such as the] Jews in Europe, Levantines and Indians in Africa, Chinese in South-east Asia” (p. 158). Walter E. Williams (2011) points to a relatively recent example of this envy toward successful minorities which resulted in “…the expulsion en masse of some 50,000 Asians from Uganda” in 1972 by the dictator Idi Amin (p. 12). When minority groups are disproportionately successful in some industry or endeavor, they are described as “controlling” that industry and taking more than their fair share of prosperity. Thomas Sowell (2002) writes that the Chinese have long faced persecution in countries like Indonesia because, despite being a small percentage of the population, they “controlled” most of the nation’s industries. But the Chinese didn’t come in and take over these industries from the native population; they created these industries in the first place, and they would likely not exist otherwise. Sowell writes that “It is no more strange that most of the capital in…[Indonesia] belongs to the Chinese than it is that most of the feathers in the world belong to birds. That is where feathers originate” (p. 63)
References
Peter Bauer (1976). Dissent on Development. Harvard University Press.
Thomas Sowell (2002). Controversial Essays. Hoover Institution Press.
Walter E. Williams (2011). Race & Economics: How Much can be Blamed on Discrimination? Hoover Institution Press.
More Trade Barriers Means More Corruption
US politicians tell us that we need to impose tariffs to stop foreign nations from ripping us off. Many economists disagree, arguing that it is not foreign nations but US businesses that rip off the American consumer by advocating for tariffs and import quotas. American consumers benefit when they are allowed to purchase the products they need at the cheapest cost, whether those products come from China, Brazil, California, or Florida. Walter E. Williams asked “Who can be against less expensive trade goods? You’ve got it. The businessmen and unions, and the congressmen who represent them” (1987, p. 74). Thomas Sowell writes that tariffs are taxes that benefit US businesses by making imports more expensive, “…and thus enable domestic producers to charge higher prices for competing products…” (2015, p. 495). Jobs in the protected industry are saved, but jobs in other industries disappear since consumers have less money to spend on other goods and services. We are led to believe that politicians restrict trade for the public good, but Left-leaning economist Paul Krugman argues that US trade policy has historically been a deeply corrupt process which primarily benefitted the politically connected. The disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariffs of the 1930s, that many argue exacerbated the Great Depression, were passed because “…enough members of Congress were bought off, one way or another, to enact legislation that almost everyone knew was bad for the nation as a whole” (2021, p. 246). Douglas Irwin uses the US sugar industry as an example of how corruption can plague trade deals at the expense of consumers. Wealthy US sugar plantation owners spend thousands on lobbying and are rewarded with legislation that restricts the supply of imported sugar. These restrictions increase the profits of a small number of large plantation owners and increase prices for consumers. The result is that American food producers and consumers are charged around two or three times more for sugar than the rest of the world. Irwin observes that “The rationale for rewarding a few wealthy sugar producers with hundreds of millions of dollars every year at the expense of consumers has never been made clear” (2020, p. 91).
— Colin Braman
References
Douglas Irwin (2020). Free Trade Under Fire (5th ed.). Princeton University Press.
Paul Krugman (2021). Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future. W. W. Norton & Company.
Thomas Sowell (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th Ed.). Basic Books.
Walter E. Williams (1987). All it Takes is Guts: A Minority View. Regnery Books.
Is Wealth Inequality a Problem in a Market-Oriented Economy?
I saw an Instagram reel posted by Pietro Valetto (@pietrovaletto) in which he concludes that the United States today has roughly the same amount of wealth inequality as France did just before the French Revolution according to the Gini-coefficient. A large Gini-coefficient is often presented as a bad thing in and of itself. No doubt many program and policy evaluators would see large Gini-coefficients as problems to be rectified by greater government regulation and redistribution. Liberty-minded individuals do not see wealth inequality as inherently contrary to the common good, provided the wealth was achieved through voluntary transactions. I also question whether wealth inequality is a relevant metric for assessing whether the average person’s—or even the poorest person’s—standard of living is improving. Even if it’s true that wealth inequality is the same today as it was during the French Revolution, people today are still many times richer. If our standards of living have significantly improved but wealth inequality has remained the same, that suggests to me that wealth inequality does not matter all that much. By today’s material standards, the average person two to three hundred years ago lived a pretty miserable life. Deirdre McCloskey, writing in 2010, estimated that in 1800, “…the world’s economy stood at the present level of Bangladesh…[and] the average human consumed…a mere $3 a day…” adjusted for cost of living (Deirdre McCloskey, p. 1). Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley cite economists who estimate “…nearly 90 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty as late as 1820…defined as less than $1.90 per person per day (in 2015 dollars)” (p. 288). Today, less than 10% of the population lives in extreme poverty. Our average life expectancy is decades longer and we have more food, with Johan Norberg noting that “The French and English in the eighteenth century received fewer calories than the current average [p. 11] in sub-Saharan Africa…” (p. 12). These are just a few of the many improvements we have seen in our standard of living. One reason I don’t like comparing wealth inequality today to that of centuries past is because not all wealth is created equal. A king whose wealth is invested in a gilded palace and diamond throne is not the same as an entrepreneur who owns factories that produce consumer goods in a competitive market. Ludwig von Mises writes that a big difference between today’s world and that of centuries ago is that industry used to primarily to serve the needs of the ruling class, but after the industrial revolution, “…industries began to produce things that could be purchased by the general population…to satisfy the needs of the masses” (p. 3).
— Colin Braman
References
Deirdre McCloskey (2010). Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World. The University of Chicago Press.
Ludwig von Mises (2006). Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (3rd ed.). Mises Institute. [originally published in 1979].
Johan Norberg (2017). Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Oneworld.
Marian Tupy & Gale Pooley (2023). Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Cato Institute.
Socialism and Coercion
I saw an Instagram reel posted by Dante Munoz (@thedantemunoz) in which he argues that socialism is simply the employees owning the companies that they work for. To those who advocate for socialism, Walter E. Williams said “…I have absolutely no problem with people wanting socialism. My problem is when they want to drag me into it” (2008, p. 63). If socialists were simply people who went around establishing worker cooperatives, the pro-liberty crowd or “free-market ideologues” as Paul Krugman calls them, would have no objection. If workers’ cooperatives provide superior working conditions and productivity in a mostly free market, then privately-owned businesses would disappear on their own. Real socialism, however, requires government action to confiscate private property and force people to work in cooperatives whether they like it or not. Although “free market ideologues” like Ludwig von Mises believed that governments were necessary for a functioning modern society, he understood that “The characteristic feature of [government] activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave…” (1974, p. 55). When socialists say they want the workers to own the means of production, they mean anybody who tries to start a privately owned business will be arrested and punished. Socialists may respond by saying “Who cares? We’re using force to achieve a better world. Besides, it’s the business owners that are engaging in coercion!” That’s a topic for another time, but we should be clear that socialism is the theft of private property through intimidation and coercion.
— Colin Braman
References
Ludwig von Mises (1974). Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Liberty Fund. [originally published in 1944].
Walter E. Williams (2008). Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays. Hoover Institution Press.
How Occupational Licensing Can Harm Consumers
Some New York legislators want to pass a bill that would make it illegal for AI chatbots to provide substantive advice that you would typically get from a licensed professional such as a lawyer, doctor, or engineer (https://hooperlundy.com/new-york-proposed-bill-would-ban-ai-chatbots-from-providing-medical-or-legal-advice/). There is some debate about how restrictive this law will actually be, but it still highlights potential downsides of professional licensure. In the United States, you need a license from a state government to practice one of many professions. The licensing boards that decide the licensure requirements are mostly made up of professionals in that field. Requiring minimum standards to practice a profession sounds like a good way to protect consumers from frauds, but Milton and Rose Friedman argue that one trade-off is that labor unions and professional organizations recommend strict licensure requirements which limit the number of practitioners. The Friedmans write that “Licensure is widely used to restrict entry…There is no occupation so remote that an attempt has not been made to restrict its practice by licensure” (p. 239). Making it more difficult to get licensed results in higher wages for professionals and more expensive services for consumers. Walter E. Williams notes that even people who want to be barbers or cosmeticians need schooling and need to pass exams for licensure. He states that “All of these requirements raise the cost of entry, which naturally leads to a smaller number of practitioners…” (p. 60). The higher cost of entry and services discriminates against customers and potential practitioners with low incomes. Licensed professionals would benefit greatly from laws that restrict the ability of AI to provide comparable services at a low cost.
References
Milton Friedman & Rose Friedman (1990). Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Harcourt, Inc. [originally published in 1979].
Walter E. Williams (2011). Race & Economics: How Much can be Blamed on Discrimination? Hoover Institution Press.
Population Control Brutality in India
Doomsday predictions and authoritarian governments have been a deadly combination across the world. In the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the work of scientists like Paul Ehrlich, governments around the world were convinced that an increasing human population would lead to mass starvation. They attempted to reduce the size of the human population by promoting so-called family planning programs. This push for population control by extremists in the US government, United Nations, and World Bank, incentivized coercive sterilization campaigns in poor nations like China and India. Chelsea Follett describes how in 1974, Henry Kissinger wrote a National Security Council Memorandum encouraging the US government to reduce the average number of children per family to just two children, and that poor nations like India should be specifically targeted, “…through aid and through UN agencies, [to] ‘assist’ with the goal of ‘population moderation.’ The memorandum urges ‘explicit consideration’ of ‘mandatory programs’” (p. 12).
Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley write about mass sterilization campaigns that took place in India between 1975 and 1977, under the reign of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The Prime Minister’s son, Sanjay Gandhi, was put in charge of the program and went all in. The Indian government enforced this campaign using a variety of coercive measures. For the unsterilized, hospitals refused to provide treatment, wages and property were stolen, access to water was denied, school faculty members and students were threatened financially and academically, housing was denied, businesses were given licenses contingent on their participating in the sterilization campaign, and the police rounded up random people in public for sterilization.
Follett estimates that the Indian government sterilized around 11 million people, and Tupy and Pooley write that “The majority of Sanjay Gandhi’s 11 million victims were vasectomized men. An additional 1 million women were fitted with IUDs…” and around 2000 people died from the procedures (p. 69).
The human population today is greater than at any point in history and yet we have fewer famines and more food than in centuries past. This is because human beings aren’t a plague of locusts that simply consume resources, but they are problem solvers and creators that discover new ways produce more abundance with fewer resources.
— Colin Braman
References
Chelsea Follett (2020). Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion. Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 897. Retrieved from: Neo-Malthusianism and Coercive Population Control in China and India: Overpopulation Concerns Often Result in Coercion | Cato Institute
Marian Tupy & Gale Pooley (2023). Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet. Cato Institute.
Warfare and the Economy
I remember during the Iraq war hearing people say that wars are usually good for boosting the US economy. Henry Hazlitt argues that this idea is nonsense and is just another version of the broken window fallacy. The French economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote a parable in 1850 about a shopkeeper’s broken window to encourage readers to consider the unintended consequences of economic and political decisions. Suppose a shopkeeper has a son who breaks one of his windows. The shopkeeper must now hire a glazier to replace his window. Some may say the act of breaking the window was a good thing because it gave money to the glazier who then uses that money to buy some other good or service, which encourages industrial activity. If this were true, then the best way to stimulate the economy would be to go around destroying and replacing all the windows in the city. Most people would agree this sounds like a ridiculous policy. The glazier has more business, but the shopkeeper has less money to patronize other businesses. Bastiat writes: “It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library… [p. 3]. The same can be said about any specific industries that thrive during or after wartime. Hazlitt writes that the reconstruction effort in Europe after WWII may have been beneficial for construction businesses, “But when they built more houses they had just that much less manpower and productive capacity left over for everything else” [p. 27]. Similarly, the European people had that much less money to spend on other consumer goods.
References
Frédéric Bastiat (2011). The Bastiat Collection (2nd ed.). Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Henry Hazlitt (1979). Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Three Rivers Press.
Are Billionaires “Enemies of Humanity”?
Pastor Paul Drees declared on Instagram that billionaires like Taylor Swift are enemies of humanity. To support this assertion, he likens a billionaire’s wealth to the hoarding of apples. Suppose Taylor Swift’s $1.6 billion is actually 1.6 billion apples, which just sit in a cellar while millions of people around the world go hungry. By hoarding billions of apples, billionaires are depriving the poor of food and are therefore the vilest of sinners. Billionaires should give away their wealth to the poor to raise living standards.
Hoarding apples is not an accurate analogy to describe wealth. Most of the wealth of billionaires is not found in stockpiles of food, water, clothing, and other consumer goods, but instead is in savings and investments. This saving and investment is an important factor in improving human standards of living.
One reason some countries are wealthier than others is because wealthier nations have better factories and equipment (more capital), which makes our labor more productive. Saifedean Ammous says that for these factories and equipment to exist, we need people “…deferring current consumption, saving for the future, and accumulating durable goods and productive capital… [which] lead to increases in productivity…” (p. 60). People become wealthy in market-oriented economies by successfully investing in companies that produce what consumers value. Those who invest in enterprises that do not produce what consumers value will lose their money.
People who save and make wise investments, whether they are billionaires or young people preparing for retirement, provide a valuable service to society. Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early write that billionaires like Warren Buffett, who do not consume most of their income but instead save and invest, allow entrepreneurs “…with good ideas and big dreams to create value. They buy plants and equipment, create jobs, and develop new goods and services…” (p. 110). This is not to say that billionaires in and of themselves are a good thing. Billionaires who gain wealth by receiving special privileges or protections from self-serving government officials are a drain on society. People around the world should be wary of businesses that lobby for government policies which shut out their competitors and reduce options for consumers.
— Colin Braman
References
Saifedean Ammous (2023). Principles of Economics. The Saif House.
Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, & John Early (2024). The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate. Rowman & Littlefield.
Do African Nations Deserve Reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade?
The UN General Assembly passed a resolution which declared “…slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as the most inhumane and enduring injustice against humanity.” The Foreign Minister of Ghana said “The perpetrators of the transatlantic slave trade are known, the Europeans, the United States of America.” He demanded an apology from Western nations and suggested that African nations should receive compensation for these past injustices (https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/un-recognizes-slave-trade-as-gravest-crime-against-humanity/ar-AA1ZqbHK?ocid=BingNewsSerp).
The transatlantic slave trade is a blight on human history, but it is dishonest to lay the blame entirely on Europe and the United States. The MSN article linked above by Kate Hairsine says that “At least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and trafficked to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade…” but nowhere does the article mention that it was Africans and Arabs who did the kidnapping. Before the invention of quinine, Western slave traders restricted their activities to African ports to avoid deadly tropical diseases (Sowell, 2005).
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2012) write that entire African states—such as “The Kingdom of the Kongo… [the] Oyo in Nigeria, [and] Dahomey in Benin…” (p. 254) were built around launching wars to enslave other Africans to sell abroad. I wonder if the foreign minister of Ghana lays any blame for slavery on the Asante Empire, located where Ghana is today, which Acemoglu and Robison write “…had been heavily involved in the capturing and export of slaves…sold at the great slaving castles of Cape Coast and Elmina” (p. 256). After the slave trade was abolished, the Asante and other African nations still engaged in enslaving others but kept the slaves for themselves for labor. Perhaps it is the descendants of slave-raiding nations who should pay reparations to the descendants of slaves sold to the Western hemisphere. Thomas Sowell (2005) suggests that efforts of intellectuals, politicians, and activists to lay the blame for slavery entirely on predominantly White western nations are used “…to induce guilt and thereby extract benefits from the white population…” (p. 111). It is no coincidence that only the wealthiest nations in the world are asked to pay reparations for the crime of slavery, which has been an institution in most societies around the world for millennia. Arab nations who also participated in the slave trade in Africa rarely face the same criticism or calls for financial compensation. Peter Bauer (2000) notes that the brutal slave trade of Africans to Arab nations lasted much longer than the Transatlantic slave trade, “Yet Arabs do not feel guilty, nor are they made to feel guilty…A feeling of guilt is genuinely a monopoly of the West” (p. 78).
— Colin Braman
References
Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Currency.
Peter Bauer (2000). From Subsistence to Exchange: and Other Essays. New Forum.
Thomas Sowell (2005). Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Encounter Books.
How Rent Control Reduces the Quality of Housing
Zohran Mamdani made a campaign video in which he blames landlords for not maintaining their properties and providing basic amenities like hot water. Mamdani is also an advocate for rent control policies, but he doesn’t realize that the rent control policies that he supports are responsible for the decline in the quality of housing in the first place. Rent control reduces the supply of housing because it is no longer profitable to build housing at the price dictated by the government. Thomas Sowell writes that not only is there little new housing built in rent-controlled cities, but the quality of existing housing deteriorates “…as landlords provide less maintenance and repair under rent control, since the housing shortage makes it unnecessary for them to maintain the appearance of their premises in order to attract tenants.” (Sowell, 2015, p. 42). Henry Hazlitt states that if rents are not allowed to increase, “…landlords will not trouble to remodel apartments or make other improvements in them…Not only will they have no economic incentive to do so; they may not even have the funds” (Hazlitt, 1979, p. 129). Some rent control policies are so oppressive that landlords find it more profitable to abandon buildings altogether. Sowell writes that in New York City, “many buildings have been abandoned after their owners found it impossible to collect enough rent to cover the costs of services that they are required by law to provide, such as heat and hot water” (Sowell, 2015, p. 44).
Henry Hazlitt predicted that the inevitable result of rent control is the government deciding to build so-called “affordable housing” at the expense of the taxpayers. This doesn’t make housing affordable, but simply passes the costs onto those who do not have the luxury of living in rent-controlled housing. Hazlitt writes that “The houses are rented at a rate that does not pay back costs of construction and operation…the tenants in the buildings are being subsidized by the rest of the population…” (Hazlitt, 1979, p. 130). The question is how long will those who are forced to foot the bill for someone else’s rent choose to stay in the city and be looted by their public servants.
— Colin Braman
References
Hazlitt, Henry (1979). Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest & Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Three Rivers Press.
Sowell, Thomas (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th ed.). Basic Books.
How Rent Control Reduces the Supply of Housing
Zohran Mamdani campaigned to be Mayor of New York City on the promise that he would freeze the rent for all rent-stabilized homes, with the intention of making New York City more affordable. Rent control schemes are criticized by economists because although their intention is to create affordable housing, one of their results is to reduce the supply of housing.
The price of rent, like everything else, fluctuates according to the supply and demand for housing. Henry Hazlitt argues that if rent controls are implemented in a city and prices are not allowed to rise when it is most demanded, “New housing is not built because there is no incentive to build it…” (Hazlitt, 1979, p. 128). If the cost of building materials increases due to inflation, then “the old level of rents will not yield a profit” (Hazlitt, p. 128). If cities like New York City or San Francisco have a history of implementing rent control policies, those who wish to build more housing will refuse to do so because of fear that the government will eventually implement rent control (Hazlitt, p. 129)
Thomas Sowell argues that rent control also reduces the supply of housing because the artificially low price encourages people to take up more space than they need. Sowell writes that when rent controls were instituted during and after WWII, this created a severe housing shortage even though the supply of housing had grown at the same rate as the population. Since rent control made housing artificially cheap, “more people had a demand for more housing space than before rent control laws were enacted…When some people used more housing than usual, other people found less housing available” (Sowell, 2015, p. 38). Young people who would normally live with roommates or older couples who would downsize when their children grow up, end up hanging on to their affordable housing, leaving those who really need it and are willing to pay for it without housing. Hazlitt argues that if rents are allowed to rise according to supply and demand and inflation, “…individual tenants will economize by taking less space. This will allow others to share the accommodations that are in short supply…” (Hazlitt, p. 128). The higher rents will encourage the construction of more housing, which will eventually reduce the price of rents.
— Colin Braman
References
Hazlitt, Henry (1979). Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest & Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Three Rivers Press.
Sowell, Thomas (2015). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th ed.). Basic Books.
Thoughts on the Murder of Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk was murdered last week at a university campus, and the public reaction by many self-identified socialists or communists has shown me just how much socialists and communists share in common with the fascists they claim to despise. One of the many things that fascists, socialists or communists have in common is their hatred for dissenting opinions and their willingness to resort to violence to satisfy their lust for control over people’s lives. Ludwig von Mises observed that “Lenin and Hitler knew very well why they abolished freedom of thought, speech, and the press…Their systems could not survive without concentration camps, censors, and hangmen.” (Mises, 1944, p. 92). Similarly, Charlie Kirk’s murderer could not defeat his opponent with words, and so he resorted to the tactics of despots. Should those who cheer on the murder of political commentators achieve any significant political power, they will not hesitate to use state-sanctioned violence to eliminate dissenters while calling it “justice” and “liberation.”
The communists in China also monopolized the media and outlawed dissenting political speech because their ideology was incapable of surviving long in the marketplace of ideas. The “One Strike and Three Antis” campaign in 1970 during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution resulted in the imprisonment and execution of tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who were guilty of “speech crimes and thought crimes” (Yang, 2016, p. 327). Yang Jisheng describes how the Chinese communists were so fearful of the ideas of those about to be executed that “the authorities went to outrageous lengths to prevent victims from expressing last words by wrapping their necks with ropes, stuffing objects in their mouths, or slitting their larynxes” (Yang, p. 332). In my opinion, there is something symbolic about Charlie Kirk being shot in the neck while in the process of committing what the more anti-social members of the political Left believe to be a speech crime.
Charlie Kirk’s murderer and the people who publicly justify it have done irreparable damage to their cause. So far, the supporters of Charlie Kirk have not resorted to the BLM/Antifa methods of burning down small businesses and beating innocent bystanders while radical academics cheer on the violence from the social media sidelines. Hopefully those who value individual liberty will continue to win hearts and minds through peaceful means, because rational minds will recognize that “Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success” (Mises, 1927, p. 29)
— Colin Braman
References
Ludwig von Mises (1927). Liberalism: The Classical Tradition. Liberty Fund.
Ludwig von Mises (1944). Bureaucracy. Liberty Fund.
Yang Jisheng (2016). The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Picador.
Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism
The Instagram account “leftist.professor.peter” summarizes Vladimir Lenin’s argument that capitalism necessarily leads to imperialism. The account author states: “Lenin argued that imperialism isn’t just about conquest; it’s a natural outcome of capitalism... When capitalism reaches its limits at home, competition creates monopolies, big corporations dominate entire industries... When domestic markets become saturated and resources are fully exploited, they pressure governments to secure new markets and resources abroad… He argued that as long as capitalism exists, powerful nations will seek to dominate weaker ones to maintain economic growth” (https://www.instagram.com/p/DGPQm6Lim63/)
If it were true that big corporations invest in poorer foreign nations to exploit their labor and resources, we would expect to see most foreign investments going to poor countries rather than to rich ones. Thomas Sowell writes that during the time when Lenin published his book on Imperialism, the majority of foreign investment was in other rich nations, not poor nations. When Lenin was claiming the Western world was exploiting underdeveloped nations: “The United States was the largest single recipient of British, German, and Dutch capital” and “the United States invested more in Canada than in all of Africa and Asia put together” (Sowell, 2016, p. 246-247). This was true for most of the 20th century until many Asian nations began to rise in power later that century. Rich nations invest more in other rich nations because they are more productive. Peter Bauer points out that the poorest nations of the world today are those that have the least amount of commercial contact with developed nations. He facetiously remarks that if foreign investment in poorer nations is exploitation, then “the poverty of these countries shows that they have experienced too little rather than too much exploitation” (Bauer, 1976, p. 169).
— Colin Braman
References
Bauer, P. T. (1976). Dissent on Development: Revised Edition. Harvard University Press.
Sowell, T. (2016). Wealth, Poverty and Politics. Basic Books.
An Unintended Consequence of Affirmative Action
Thomas Sowell in his book Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study argues that one of the unintended consequences of affirmative action policies designed to benefit minority groups is that they incentivize more people to identify as the preferred minorities. This can end up diluting the benefits which were designated for the intended marginalized populations. Around the world, some people with varying levels of mixed ancestry change their racial identity when the government offers privileges to a specific group. For example, Sowell says that the size of the Native American population dramatically increased after the establishment of various affirmative action policies in the United States. A cohort of 50,000 Native Americans between the ages of 15 and 19 in 1960 increased by roughly 60% to become 80,000 strong in 1980, which Sowell calls “a biological impossibility made possible on paper by redesignations of the same individuals” (p. 8). Some people claiming racial minority status “have included blond-haired and blue-eyed individuals with official papers showing some distant ancestor of another race.” (p. 8). There were similar increases in the ethnically preferred groups in the 1980s among Australia’s aboriginal population and among China’s ethnic minorities in the 1990s. Some Chinese citizens would go back hundreds of years in their ancestry to qualify for government privileges reserved for ethnic minorities.
— Colin Braman
Reference
Thomas Sowell (2005). Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study. Yale University Press.
Does “Racial Capitalism” Explain Poverty in the Global South?
Ibram X. Kendi argues that Western exploitation--or what he calls “racial capitalism”-- explains why so many countries in the global south are poor in spite of having rich natural resources. Kendi writes that centuries of Western exploitation “…makes countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo one of the richest countries in the world belowground and one of the poorest countries in the world aboveground” (Kendi, 2019, p. 163). The problem with Kendi’s explanation is that it fails to explain the vast differences in wealth between Europeans and the region we know today as the Democratic Republic of the Congo before the Europeans ever made any significant contact. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson write that in the 1400s and 1500s, the Kongo was incredibly poor when the Portuguese and the Dutch first arrived, stating that “Technology was rudimentary by European standards, with the Kongolese having neither writing, the wheel, nor the plow” (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012, p. 87).
If the Kongo and other African regions were rich in resources before the arrival of Europeans, Peter Bauer asks “Why have the Africans not developed their mineral resources? Why did they have to wait for Europeans to explore, develop, process, and market them?” (Bauer, 2000, p. 76). Bauer observes that when we look at material progress over time, we see that it is not unusual for nations with few resources to become wealthy and nations with abundant resources to remain in poverty. Indigenous peoples in North America had vast resources but little material wealth, and yet nations like Japan, Germany, or Britain had few natural resources but eventually developed much wealth. Natural resources are useless if you do not have the means to use them. Thomas Sowell notes that “The natural resources we use today were even more abundant in the era of the cave man, but the people of that prehistoric era were culturally not yet able to use most of those resources” (Sowell, 2016, p. 89). There are certainly many factors that contribute to the relative wealth and poverty of nations, but Bauer argues that some important factors for material progress include “…personal qualities, social institutions and mores, and political arrangements which make for endeavor and achievement…” (Bauer, 2000, p. 76).
— Colin Braman
References
Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Currency.
Bauer, P. (2000). From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays. Princeton University Press.
Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an Antiracist. One World.
Sowell, T. (2016). Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: Revised and Enlarged Edition. Basic Books.
Reducing Carbon Emissions to Save Underdeveloped Nations
Activists and academics who want to fight climate change sometimes argue we must decrease carbon emissions in order to help underdeveloped nations. Industrialized nations produce disproportionate amounts of carbon and also reap most of its benefits, while underdeveloped nations feel the most negative impact from extreme weather events. If we actually ask people around the world to rank their top policy priorities, we find that the people of the world have a different opinion on how best to help poor nations. Bjorn Lomborg, in his book False Alarm, cites data collected by a global United Nations survey asking 9.7 million of people to rank order their top policy priorities. The top five priorities were Education, Health, Jobs, No corruption, and Nutrition. “Action on climate change” was ranked 16th overall, right behind “phone and internet”. It turns out that climate change is a much bigger deal for richer nations than for people in the poorest nations. Lomborg states “People in rich countries, having much better education, health, and nutrition, tend to be more afraid of climate change, but even for Europeans climate rises only to the tenth-highest concern. For the world’s poorest, climate is robustly last.” Program evaluators who specialize in participatory research methods should be aware of the potential disconnect between what the academics want and what the people they claim to fight for want.
— Colin Braman
Reference
Bjorn Lomborg (2021). False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. Basic Books.
Why do workers earn more in one country than another?
Why is a construction worker in a developed nation paid higher real wages than a construction worker in an underdeveloped nation? Why don’t the governments of poorer nations simply declare a $20 minimum wage to lift all their workers out of poverty? Henry Hazlitt argues that the primary reason why some workers are paid more than others, even though they work in the same industry, is because those who are paid more tend to produce more. One man or woman driving a giant truck or bulldozer can move more raw materials than a hundred people using pickaxes and carrying raw materials on their backs. If we want workers in underdeveloped nations to have a higher quality life, their labor needs to be made more productive through greater capital investment, technological innovation, or better education and training. Hazlitt states that “We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces. The best way to raise wages, therefore, is to raise marginal labor productivity…Real wages come out of production, not out of government decrees” (p. 139).
— Colin Braman
Reference
Henry Hazlitt (1988). Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Crown Currency.
Zohran Mamdani and State-Run Supermarkets
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Mayoral candidate of NYC, wants to establish state-run grocery stores that are designed to save customers’ money by eliminating the profit motive (https://foodtank.com/news/2025/06/city-owned-grocery-stores-a-bold-fix-for-food-insecurity/). Socialists see eliminating the profit motive as a virtue of their various policies and programs, but it is precisely those profits and losses that are necessary for increasing the affordability of goods and services. Walter E. Williams (2008) argues that rather than being exploitative, “profits are incentives for firms to satisfy customers, find least-cost production methods and move resources from low-valued to high-valued uses” (p. 90). Since Zohran Mamdani’s state-run grocery stores will not react to the signals given by profits and losses, they have no incentive to reduce costs or offer higher quality services than their competitors. Ludwig von Mises (1944) points out that if state-run enterprises are not making profits, then they are probably losing money, which means taxpayers will have to make up the difference. Mises writes: “When the government tries to eliminate or to mitigate this dependence [on profits] by covering the losses of its plants and shops… The means for covering the losses must be raised by the imposition of taxes” (p. 70). State-run grocery stores will not save money for New Yorkers overall; they will pay low prices at the cash register—assuming the artificially low prices do not lead to shortages or rationing—but then pay more in taxes to subsidize an inferior product.
— Colin Braman
References
Ludwig von Mises (1944). Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Liberty Fund.
Walter E. Williams (2008). Liberty vs. The Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays. Hoover Press.
Walter E. Williams and Ibram X. Kendi on Welfare Hypocrisy
Conservatives have long criticized welfare programs for being counterproductive. By providing unconditional handouts to the poor, the government encourages people to remain poor by removing their incentive to develop their human capital. Professor Ibram X. Kendi notes that those who take this position are hypocritical for remaining silent when it comes to government handouts for the middle and upper classes. Conservative politicians will blame social problems in the Black American community on government handouts, but at the same time who will say nothing “about rich White people who depended on the welfare of inheritances, tax cuts, government contracts, hookups, and bailouts…the New Deal, the GI Bill, subsidized suburbs, and exclusive White networks” (p. 154).
Libertarian-minded individuals have consistently agreed with Kendi’s critique. If government handouts are detrimental to the poor, then there is no reason why handouts to corporations would be any less deleterious. The economist Walter E. Williams, who was no ally of the political Left or anti-capitalist ideologies, likewise criticized Republicans who support corporate subsidies but oppose federal welfare schemes or student loan forgiveness on the grounds that such policies are too expensive or are immoral because they force one person to pay for the livelihood of another who did not earn it. If Republicans extended their critiques of the welfare state to include the tens of billions of dollars the federal government gives in corporate subsidies, then the nation might actually reduce federal spending. When Republicans were trying to reform welfare in the 1990s, Williams stated: “How can you possibly talk about slamming the handout door on a poor, lazy, good-for-nothing welfare recipient while at the same time sponsoring handouts for members of America’s Fortune 500?...Republicans would be on far greater moral...footing if their version of welfare reform included government corporate handouts” (p. 56-57)
— Colin Braman
References
Ibram X. Kendi (2019). How to be an Antiracist. One World.
Walter E. Williams (1999). More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well. Hoover Institution Press.