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Among the numerous fallacies embraced by socialism, one of the most notable is completely ignoring the value of investment and risk. Socialists love to talk about the value of “labor” and how profit is made on the backs of “labor,” but they ignore the fundamentals of human nature and of how the market actually works. …
Contrary to the claims of many progressives and socialists, wealth is not created primarily through labor; rather it is created through taking risks and having a willingness to delay gratification. Yes, labor can create some wealth by converting and combining lesser valued goods into more valued goods, but most labor is simply traded—it doesn’t actually …
Goods and services aren’t free because they involve scarce resources. If you want heat, food, shelter, clothing, transportation, internet, and all the other things that make life comfortable and fun, you either have to make them yourself—chop wood and build a fire, dig a well, forage for food, etc.—or you have to trade for them …
I recently had an interesting (and short, because he quickly blocked me) conversation on Facebook with a self-styled “anarcho-primitivist” named Justin Stout. He claimed that “economics is a form of brain damage” and went on to make his case thusly: Nomadic gatherer-hunters produced nothing. A hunter does not produce wild animals. A gatherer does not …
The employer-employee relationship doesn’t involve authority because it is an ongoing, voluntary trade of labor for goods (typically money) or occasionally services. There is often confusion on this issue because it might appear that when a “boss” tells his employee what to do, he is exercising authority over that employee. Consider this example to help …
The whole notion of capitalism is that those with capital are incentivized to invest it in order to obtain a profit. If profits are outlawed or significantly reduced through confiscatory taxation, the incentive to invest is reduced or eliminated. If profit is forbidden, I have no incentive to invest rather than consume. Why would I …