Free To Choose Network

In the 1850s, slavery's defenders saw Adam Smith's economics as a threat. To them, free-market economists were abolitionists, working to bring slavery to an end. Lou and Phil revisit an overlooked history of free markets and abolition on this week's Happy Hour Econ.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. https://happyhourecon.org/episodes/slavery-capitalism-and-the-historical-record/

Where do new ideas actually come from?

In this clip from "Perspectives Matter," host Dennis McCuistion talks with biologist and author Matt Ridley about how Adam Smith's insight on the division of labor connects to innovation.

Ridley explains that when people specialize in what they do best, they start looking for ways to be more efficient at it, and those small improvements add up to innovation. He adds that everyday commercial exchange is about more than coffee and money; it is also how people exchange ideas.

Watch their full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzvAMrv5u0Q&list=PLG2LEPerJ4Dc&index=3

Think about everything that goes into a day of hospital care: the tests, the procedures, the services. Now imagine the number and complexity of all of those growing year after year.

That, Milton Friedman argued nearly 50 years ago, is the main reason hospital costs rose. Not prices running ahead of inflation, but more care being delivered.

He saw it as a story about consumer choice. As voluntary private health insurance spread across the population, millions of Americans decided they wanted more medical care. Friedman compared it to spending on automobiles, which grew because the public wanted to buy more cars.

Government spending on Medicare and Medicaid played a role too. But primarily, Friedman said, the public wanted more medical care, and the market responded.

"This problem of a monopoly emerging is a false problem."

Milton Friedman on how competition breaks down monopolies, unless government enforces them.

Cut off a major oil producer like Iran, and the rest of the world still needs that oil. Lou and Phil explain how sanctions ripple through the global economy, and why the regime stays comfortable while ordinary people foot the bill.

Pull up a stool for the full episode of Happy Hour Econ with Lou and Phil on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. https://happyhourecon.org/episodes/sanctions-impossible/

Is optimism about the future a matter of hope, or a matter of evidence?

This new episode of Perspectives Matter features host Dennis McCuistion and biologist and author Matt Ridley.

Ridley makes the case for "rational optimism," drawing on the dramatic decline in extreme poverty during his lifetime, gains in lifespan and income, and falling child mortality. He also asks why so much of that progress has gone unrecognized while pessimism has dominated public debate.

Watch their full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzvAMrv5u0Q&list=PLG2LEPerJ4Dc&index=3

"Why can't we have that too?" For East Germans with cousins in the West, it was the question that wouldn't go away.

Lou and Phil talk about how ideas cross borders that governments try to seal shut.

The full episode of Happy Hour Econ with Lou and Phil is on tap now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. https://happyhourecon.org/episodes/sanctions-impossible/