
Kansas and Colorado, compared
News that a Wichita-based company is moving to Colorado sparked a round of Kansas-bashing, most not based on facts. Continue reading Kansas and Colorado, compared
News that a Wichita-based company is moving to Colorado sparked a round of Kansas-bashing, most not based on facts. Continue reading Kansas and Colorado, compared
As we approach another birthday of Milton Friedman, here’s his article where he clears up the authorship of a famous aphorism, and explains how to really get a free lunch. Based on remarks at the banquet celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new building, Washington, May 1993.
I am delighted to be here on the occasion of the opening of the Cato headquarters. It is a beautiful building and a real tribute to the intellectual influence of Ed Crane and his associates.
I have sometimes been associated with the aphorism “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” which I did not invent. I wish more attention were paid to one that I did invent, and that I think is particularly appropriate in this city, “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.” But all aphorisms are half-truths. One of our favorite family pursuits on long drives is to try to find the opposites of aphorisms. For example, “History never repeats itself,” but “There’s nothing new under the sun.” Or “Look before you leap,” but “He who hesitates is lost.” The opposite of “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” is clearly “The best things in life are free.”
And in the real economic world, there is a free lunch, an extraordinary free lunch, and that free lunch is free markets and private property. Why is it that on one side of an arbitrary line there was East Germany and on the other side there was West Germany with such a different level of prosperity? It was because West Germany had a system of largely free, private markets — a free lunch. The same free lunch explains the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China, and the prosperity of the United States and Great Britain. These free lunches have been the product of a set of invisible institutions that, as F. A. Hayek emphasized, are a product of human action but not of human intention.
Continue reading “The real free lunch: Markets and private property”
Citizens in Wichita have been busy exercising their rights of initiative and referendum at the municipal level. The Kansas Legislature should grant the same rights to citizens at the state level. Continue reading Wichita has examples of initiative and referendum
The arguments in favor of term limits are presented, along with rebuttals to common objections to term limits. Continue reading Arguments for and against term limits
A candidate challenging a long-time incumbent for United States Senator from Kansas provides the opportunity to explore the need for term limits, and the related concepts of initiative and referendum. Continue reading WichitaLiberty.TV: Term limits, initiative, and referendum
The controversy surrounding the residence of a long-time senator from Kansas raises issues of term limits and the ability of citizens to exercise the power of initiative and referendum. Then, the seen and the unseen applied to economic development in Wichita, and why do we rely on certain experts. Continue reading WichitaLiberty.TV February 16, 2014
As we approach another birthday of Milton Friedman, here’s his article where he clears up the authorship of a famous aphorism, and explains how to really get a free lunch Continue reading The real free lunch: Markets and private property
The Kansas political class is upset because a federal court drew new districts they way they should be drawn. Continue reading In Kansas, redistricting went well, after all
Today: Economic freedom lecture, liberal success factor, Joshua Blick, economy, Rasmussen polls, Kansas Democrats, young Republicans. Continue reading Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Monday December 6, 2010
Today: Earmarks, Economic development, Free markets, Health care, Wichita city council, Wichita Pachyderm Club, Subsidy, Downtown Wichita revitalization, Initiative and referendum. Continue reading Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Monday November 29, 2010
Today: Wichita city council, Wichita Pachyderm Club, Politics, Downtown Wichita revitalization, Wichita Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, Taxation, Education, United States Congress, Term limits. Continue reading Kansas and Wichita quick takes: Monday November 15, 2010
In the contest for the Republican Party nomination for United States Congress from the fourth district of Kansas, Wichita businessman Wink Hartman has ran many advertisements making an issue of a clean campaign pledge. He’s signed it, and says that leading rival Mike Pompeo won’t sign it. Continue reading The Hartman clean campaign pledge: Pompeo response
Today’s Wichita Eagle contains a story (Tea party organizers: We paid for event) covering the dust-up between a member of the Kansas House of Representatives and tea party organizers.
The state representative — Dale Swenson, a Democrat whose district covers parts of southwest Wichita — said of the tea party event: “We need taxes to support their protests.” Continue reading Dale Swenson, tea party critic, a barrel of laughs
Wichita real estate development, redistricting, newspapers, free markets. Continue reading Articles of Interest