Psychologists and psychiatrists, over the recent years, have uncovered a phenomenon they call, “pathological altruism”. They describe how someone may have such an insatiable desire to help someone else, that they may actually be doing the recipient of that help more harm than good, without realizing it. Free marketeers have witnessed and described this very same behavior…
A quick update to all the readers of the BCE, I am currently adding audio to the bottom of each article. You will begin to find an audio widget at the end of each article for those who may be seeing impaired, short of time, or just would rather listen to a British guy read…
If you’ve ever seen a nature program on TV, undoubtedly you’ve seen how the secondary predators, like jackals, hyenas, and baboons bring down their prey differently than the larger predators, namely that one crushing death bite to the throat. Rather, they slowly wear down their prey until the whole pack is able to descend upon the poor creature…
American culture can teach us historical lessons without us even realizing it. We are all familiar with the chorus of the song, “Sixteen Tons” where it goes, “I owe my soul to the company store”. The song describes the mining “company towns” of the day. Due to the isolation of these towns, the low amount…
As always in an election year, the public clamors for more jobs. Understandably, being unemployed for any reason is a deplorable (did I just use that word?) position to find oneself in. Politicians promise more jobs. But does the market call for more jobs or more production?
Ever since the Housing Bubble of 2008 imploded, many Austrian economists, authors, and spokesmen have come out to announce that hyperinflation was just around the corner. The concerns of a hyperinflation scenario had much to do with the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing (QE). The Fed had exploded its balance sheet to unprecedented levels since the…
Over the years, economics has taken on many different roles than the intended scientific discipline of human action. The study of economics has been broken up into separate, and often competing “schools” of thought. Specifically, the understanding of what economics describes, how it is used to understand certain activity and how to apply economics in…
The Blue Collar Economist 