Free To Choose Media Podcast

With a human population larger than any point in history, we are consuming more natural resources than at any point in history. So, how can we ever expect to maintain this pace without running out of resources? As it turns out, the people who seriously sound these alarm bells are forgetting one thing. Throughout history, bigger problems have produced bigger solutions. Had those initial problems never arisen, neither would have the solutions. As noted scholar Julian Simon put it, “We need our problems. In some fundamental way we need bigger and better problems. That’s not to say we should run …

What is liberalism? What is conservatism? The divide between the two opposing ideologies has widened recently, but why? It may have to do with the two sides not only believing that they are right, but believing they have the duty to impose their views on the other half. We’ve moved from an era from which politics and religion were separate. Now, we are walking the border of politics becoming religion. Will that shift result in a culture war, or are we already there? As theologian Dr. Kenneth Craycraft Sr. puts political ideology in terms of religion, “The problem is that …

Humans are irrational beings. Choices differ from person to person, and even from lab experiments to the real world. So, with all that differentiation, how can economists expect to understand how market forces will impact the decisions that individuals make? It turns out that most individuals go about making decisions the same way, but the results of these decisions vary wildly. Nobel laureate Gary Becker attempts to explain how that process works, “To me, maximizing utility simply means the following: that consumers can order all the opportunities they have available to them…possible choices. They can order them so they prefer …

The vast majority of people agree that we should be doing what we can to help protect the environment, but are we doing it the right way? Regulations may be based in science, but they’re created by bureaucrats with only one singular focus. Whose job is it to look at the impact of these regulations on a larger scale? And is the situation being presented in a way to intentionally scare the public? Dr. Walter Williams would say so, as well as professor of environmental science Dr. Fred Singer, “We have in the federal government, agencies that look at things …

The Federal Reserve was originally created to bring stability to our financial and monetary system. However, despite multiple failures, it has widely escaped criticism. There is a myth that the Fed is there to protect us. But upon closer inspection, does it? If you ask Nobel laureate Dr. James Buchanan, the answer is clear, “The Fed more or less just inherited this legacy of being a monopoly in control of a monetary institution. It’s not a constitutional body. It has never been explicitly examined legislatively. And yet it gets away with all this without any criticism because the criticism is …

When the Soviet Union collapsed, countries in the Eastern Bloc were faced with a huge challenge. They needed to take their socialist societies and convert them into capitalist ones. How did they change a country where most property was state-owned into something that was based on private property? Each country handled it differently and the results are not surprising. Despite these challenges in the early 90’s, Milton Friedman remained optimistic, “The hopeful thing about this is that the inefficiency of the former system is so great that the new system can make great progress even though they have very inefficient …

What can nature teach us? It’s a question that mankind has investigated since the beginning of time. We’ve learned so much, but there’s still even more that we don’t know. That’s why people like David Attenborough dedicate their lives to studying the world around us. The lessons that David has learned over the years have filled multiple hours of television programming and even more publications and writings. One particular opinion of his, on the role of zoos in our society, stands out in today’s focus on the ethical treatment of animals. “I think the zoos have two very important functions.  …

Critics of the free market system often point out that it is an unfair system due to it leaving some with wealth at the expense of oppressing others. What those critics often ignore is that exchanges in this economic structure are voluntary. Each side comes out of the interaction with their desired result. Since the seller is amassing wealth by helping others get the goods and services they need, isn’t that more moral than proposed socialist solutions? When it comes to the relationship between morals and economics, Dr. Walter Williams has this to say, “Unless you believe that there’s a …

Government regulation is a force that influences nearly every aspect of our daily lives. The intentions are usually well-meaning. They are created to fix a problem or a perceived market failure. The problem that we run into time and time again is that the fixes usually create another problem, while only putting a temporary patch over the initial problem. The response is usually another patch with the same result. In the words of Nobel laureate George Stigler, “The trouble is that normally the way (advocates) want to solve the problem is to create either a new agency, or a new …

What is money? For thousands of years currency was tied to a commodity, if the commodity itself wasn’t actually exchanged. Today, that relationship has drastically been altered. Money, as a human institution, has evolved from having a real value to only having a perceived value. Milton Friedman traces it back to one specific date. “It’s seldom that you can date precisely when there’s a major change in a human institution let alone in a monetary institution. But you know it’s an interesting fact that you can date precisely a really drastic change in the character in the monetary system around …