Business and Economy

Overview

People should be allowed to act freely in their business endeavors.  Human beings have the capacity, ability, and drive to create value.  Free markets allows for competition that quickly increases the quality and availability of useful products while decreasing the costs and correcting any negative behavior.  

Any government regulation beyond enforcing property rights and contract law is illegitimate and dangerous.  Such policies either unfairly benefit one company over another or stifle the innovations that drive progress.  Such unintended consequences are often worse than the problems they are drafted to correct.  

Opinions

Voluntary economic exchange is inherently fair and does not justify government intervention.  Further, government intervention in voluntary economic exchange on behalf of some citizens at the expense of others is inherently unfair.

Beyond the moral case for free trade is the well-established fact that when people are free to buy from, sell to, and invest with one another as they choose, they can achieve far more than when governments attempt to control economic decisions.  Widening circles of people with whom we transact -- including across political borders -- brings benefits to consumers in the form of lower prices, greater variety, and better quality, and it allows companies to reap the benefits of innovation, specialization, and economies of scale that larger markets bring.  Free markets are essential to prosperity, and expanding free markets  as much as possible enhances that prosperity.  

Cato Handbook for Policymakers

No taxes, no regulation.

Doug Casey, Casey Research

There should be no Departments of Commerce, Labor, or Energy, and no economic regulation of any kind. 

Robert Poole, Reason Foundation

The market, while not perfect, is self-correcting.  Reformers will better rectify any inadequacies they detect in the market by reaping the profits available from that inadequacy than by denouncing the very system which makes meaningful reform possible.  

Jim Cox, Author of The Concise Guide to Economics

All economic affairs should be left to the marketplace.  Markets must operate under the rules of law, and a policing and legal action by government is all that is remotely appropriate.  All government bailouts, stimuli, and regulation (beyond the prevention of force and fraud) are inappropriate and unconstitutional.

Richard Timberlake, University of Georgia

Government stays out.

Walter Block, Loyola University New Orleans

Economic transactions among people should be free from coercive intrusion.  Government bailouts, taxes, and regulation are hence illegitimate.

David Theroux, The Independent Institute

Governments have no role other than the courts adjudicating the protection of lives and property, and the sanctity of contracts.

David Littmann, Mackinac Center for Public Policy

The law should protect the right of individuals to peacefully accumulate property (through creation and trade). It should protect the rights to contract, mobility, and production so long as no fraud, deception or violence is employed.

Lawrence W. Reed, Foundation for Economic Education