Economics

In-depth articles on economics exploring key policies in healthcare economics, agriculture subsidies, trade tariffs, government subsidies, and monetary systems — with critical examination of their broader impacts on public health, individual liberty, free markets, economic freedom, and the urgent need for policy reform.

Brownstone Institute provides alternative perspectives on how economic interventions affect society, from farm subsidies distorting food systems and health outcomes to monetary policy enabling control, tariff effects on global trade and liberty, and pathways to restore free-market principles and personal freedoms.

All economics articles are translated into multiple languages to support global readers, open international dialogue, and promote evidence-based reform worldwide.

bud light

What the Bud Light Fiasco Reveals about the Ruling Class 

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The emergent fissures between the classes – and the diffusions of our ruling class into many sectors public and private – suggest an urgency for a new consciousness of the real meaning of the common good, which is inseparable from liberty. The marketing director of Bud Light talked a good line about “inclusivity” but she plotted to impose everything but that. Her plan was designed for the one percent and to the exclusion of all the people who actually consume the product, to say nothing for the workers who actually make and deliver the product she was charged with promoting.

What the Bud Light Fiasco Reveals about the Ruling Class  Read Journal Article

donald trump

The Buck Stops Where?

By / / / 16 minute read / Articles
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The most outrageous breakout of statist excess in US history happened on Donald Trump’s watch with his full complicity. In turn, these Covid-lockdown assaults on normal economic function transformed what was a mediocre economic record during his first 38 months in office into a complete disaster during the last 10 months.

The Buck Stops Where? Read Journal Article

technology tyranny

Technology and a Tyranny Worse than Prison 

By / / , , / 12 minute read / Articles
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There is a lesson in this as far as the ineluctable need for action is concerned when rational argument with would-be oppressors gets one nowhere. This is especially the case when it becomes obvious that these oppressors are not remotely interested in a reasonable exchange of ideas, but summarily resort to the current unreasonable incarnation of technical rationality, namely AI-controlled mass surveillance, with the purpose of subjugating entire populations. 

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slow the spread

Three Years to Slow the Spread Marked the Advent of Push-Button Tyranny

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Covid hysteria and the three-year anniversary of 15 Days To Slow The Spread serves as the beginning period of a permanent scar resulting from government power grabs and federal overreach. While life is back to normal in most of the country, the Overton window of acceptable policy has slid even further in the direction of push-button tyranny. Hopefully, much of the world has awakened to the reality that most of the people in charge aren’t actually doing what’s best for their respective populations.

Three Years to Slow the Spread Marked the Advent of Push-Button Tyranny Read Journal Article

administrative state

The Administrative State Strikes Again: Monetary Edition

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They have done it again, and in a way that makes a flaming mockery of both honest market economics and the so-called rule of law. In effect, the triumvirate of fools at the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC have essentially guaranteed $9 trillion of uninsured bank deposits with no legislative mandate and no capital to make these sweeping promises good.

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chickens

Why Are the Chickens So Sick?

By / / , / 9 minute read / Articles
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The parallels between HPAI expert orthodoxy and covid orthodoxy are too numerous to mention. Fear porn is rampant in our culture. The HPAI worry feeds food worry, which makes people clamor for government security. People will accept just about anything if they’re afraid. Does anyone really think human cleverness is going to beat migratory ducks? Really? Think it through and then embrace a more natural remedy: well-managed decentralized pastured poultry with appropriate flock sizes.

Why Are the Chickens So Sick? Read Journal Article

Occupy Silicon Valley

Where Is Occupy Silicon Valley?

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Silvergate’s failure was not a scandal. SVB’s failure per se was not a scandal (except to the extent that our vaunted banking regulators failed to prevent the most prosaic type of failure). Again–the scandal is the politically tainted response that will have baleful consequences in the future, as the response virtually guarantees that there will be more SVBs in the future.

Where Is Occupy Silicon Valley? Read Journal Article

Theorists vs. Practitioners

Theorists vs. Practitioners

By / / , / 7 minute read / Articles
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Theory without a reality check can make the world unlivable. This is because theorists can build beautiful models that hide grave errors, intentionally or not, and there is no means by which their mistakes are revealed until you test them against the real world. You never want them in charge of the whole project.

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doctor trust smoking vaccines

The AMA Said Trust Your Doctor on Smoking

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Doctors who opposed smoking faced ridicule from their colleagues.  Dr. Alton Ochsner, a renowned surgeon and sentinel voice warning of the dangers of tobacco, began publishing on the connection between smoking and lung cancer in the early 1940s.  His 1954 book Smoking and Cancer: A Doctor’s Report was negatively reviewed in prominent medical journals, characterized as a medieval model of logic that belongs in the nonscience section of a library.  Prior to his appearance on Meet the Press, Dr. Ochsner was told he could not discuss the relationship between smoking and lung cancer on air.

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WHO IHR human rights

Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide

By / / , , , , / 37 minute read / Articles
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The amendments to the IHR are intended to fundamentally change the relationship between individuals, their country’s governments, and the WHO. They place the WHO as having rights overriding that of individuals, erasing the basic principles developed after World War Two regarding human rights and the sovereignty of States. In doing so, they signal a return to a colonialist and feudalist approach fundamentally different to that to which people in relatively democratic countries have become accustomed. The lack of major pushback by politicians and the lack of concern in the media and consequent ignorance of the general public is therefore both strange and alarming.

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Totalitarianism

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian

By / / , / 7 minute read / Articles
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We might still have food on the shelves — though of worse quality and at much higher prices. We might still have the ability to move and work and travel, but heavily circumscribed, always at risk of canceling and always with papers showing the number of needles in your arm, or your scarred heart tissue. Nobody is torturing us (yet anyway) and for the most part we have some semblance of rights and freedoms remaining. ut we’re closer to that horrific totalitarian world today than we were, say five years ago.

The West Must Never Again Go Totalitarian Read Journal Article

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