Art Carden

1 month ago | mereeconomics.com | Art Carden

By Art Carden — 12 May 2025 Like a lot of Star Wars fans, I've been kind of disappointed in the franchise since Disney took it over. I liked The Force Awakens a lot and absolutely loved Rogue One. I thought The Last Jedi was interesting--a good movie on its own--but it created a lot of problems they didn't fix in The Rise of Skywalker (it seems pretty clear that "somehow, Palpatine has returned" wasn't where they were planning to go when they started the sequel trilogy).

2 months ago | econlib.org | Art Carden

There is an endless list of ways we want to improve cities and help the poor. The list of problems plaguing poor communities is long. Every major US city has areas where the schools are terrible, crime is rampant, the sidewalks and streets are little more than rubble, fresh food is in short supply, and there are no parks or playgrounds to speak of. Helping people in this lowly state should be simple. Make the schools better. Hire more cops. Spread some concrete and asphalt. Start a farmer’s market.

Mar 16, 2025 | econlib.org | Pierre Lemieux |Art Carden |David Henderson

If someone external to your group wants to invest in a certain territory encompassing you, your group’s permission should be required. The argument seems obvious. It is nearly by definition that when we make a decision collectively, the individual must submit. The individual is just one but the collective is more than one. Or so goes the argument.

Mar 15, 2025 | econlib.org | Art Carden |David Henderson |Marcos Falcone

A body of literature called the New History of Capitalism argues (incorrectly, I believe) that Western prosperity is built on legacies of exploitation like colonialism and slavery. Economists are very skeptical because the New Historians of Capitalism rest much of their case on fundamental misunderstandings of basic economic concepts like national income accounting. Economists have criticized some of the movement’s foundational texts in the blogosphere and scholarly journals.

Mar 3, 2025 | forbes.com | Art Carden

When people think about meaningful jobs that make a difference, they usually don’t think about janitors, auto mechanics, baristas, fast food workers, middle managers, and secretaries. However, when you think about these jobs, they mean a lot more than you might think. You might be familiar with people inflating job titles, but this isn’t that.