free market

“Startup Cities,” Honduras, and Experiments in Freedom

"Tom W. Bell, a law professor at Chapman University and a legal consultant to the Honduran 'startup city' project, spoke at Reason's Los Angeles headquarters about why libertarians should be interested in the potential for new forms of governance within the proposed 'zones of economic development' (ZEDEs) being pushed in Honduras. He addressed various legal challenges and setbacks that prior efforts faced, such as Paul Romer's failed RED zones. Bell also discussed other experiments in municipal governance, such as Co-op City in the Bronx and Sandy Springs, GA." Continue reading →

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First Tax Haven in Armenia Launched

"Senior Armenian and Russia officials inaugurated over the weekend Armenia’s first-ever tax-free business zone which is meant to mainly cater to high-tech manufacturing companies. The Free Economic Zone is located in the premises of an electronics plant and a research institute in Yerevan that were handed over to Russia, along with several other Armenian enterprises, a decade ago in payment for Yerevan’s $100 million debt to Russia. Companies will be exempt from profit, value-added and property taxes as well as import duties. The government hopes that this privileged business environment will help to attract more foreign investment to Armenia." Continue reading →

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Austrian Detroit?

"As Detroit begins to sort through the ill-begotten public liabilities that have driven it to bankruptcy, an important opportunity is at hand to revitalize the city that was once the epicenter of American entrepreneurship and manufacturing, while setting an example for other municipal governments that appear to be headed toward a similar fate. Here is an 'Austrian moment' in the making, a potential libertarian awakening guided by the market-oriented, non-interventionist principles of the Austrian school of economics. The time has come to free Detroit’s entrepreneurial spirit from the legacy of government mismanagement." Continue reading →

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Obama’s False History of Public ‘Infrastructure’ Investment

"The makers of autos, tires and headlights began building roads privately long before any state or the federal government got involved. The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway for cars, pieced together from new and existing roads in 1913, was conceived and partly built by entrepreneurs. Railroads are another example of the infrastructure-follows-entrepreneurship rule. Before the 1860s, almost all railroads were privately financed and built. Airplanes became a major industry and started carrying passengers by the early 1920s. During that period, nearly all airports were privately funded." Continue reading →

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Why College Football Will Be Dead Within 20 Years

"An acronym that has higher education administrators very worried is MOOC - Massive Open Online Course. In short, a MOOC is a tuition-free online course that can be taught to a massive number of students simultaneously. Pundits often talk about 'disruptive technology'; technology that brings about massive changes in life, business, or the economy. The phrase can be overused, but if anything qualifies, MOOCs are it. It's one thing to offer a course for free online, but the idea is crazy, right, that a college or university could replace traditional classroom education with online coursework for credit or even offer an entire degree online for free?" Continue reading →

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Amazon.com Creates 5,000 Jobs, Destroys 25,000 in the Process?

"Amazon has managed to grow to its current level with just about 89,000 employees, or almost exactly half of TJX’s workforce. To do that yet pull down 150% more revenue makes Amazon about five times more efficient than TJX, measured by retail sales per staffer. Amazon is able to do so because the number of shoppers who can be served per warehouse employee is much higher than at a typical retail location—especially the smaller stores that TJX mostly uses. One IT guy can take the midnight shift and keep a few thousand servers up and running, but one janitor cannot clean the floors at two locations, let alone 400." Continue reading →

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Countries with the world’s most libertarian laws

"In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to decriminalise possession of all drugs for personal use. The country introduced state-funded therapy programmes for abusers which have seen record number of people seeking help. Rates of HIV infection and drug-related deaths have also halved in the ten years since the new legislation. But it is in fact the Czechs that have the most liberal laws when it comes to personal use. Citizens can legally be in possession of up to half an ounce of marijuana, 40 ‘magic mushrooms’, four tabs of LSD or Ecstasy and one gram of cocaine." Continue reading →

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South Korea’s $4 Million Teacher

"Tutoring services are growing all over the globe. But nowhere have they achieved the market penetration and sophistication of hagwons in South Korea, where private tutors now outnumber schoolteachers. The bulk of Mr. Kim's earnings come from the 150,000 kids who watch his lectures online each year. For decades, the South Korean government has been trying to tame the country's private-education market. Politicians have imposed curfews and all manner of regulations on hagwons, even going so far as to ban them altogether during the 1980s, when the country was under military rule. Each time the hagwons have come back stronger." Continue reading →

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The Bitcoin Gambling Diaspora

"Bitcoin gambling is growing to be much more than just SatoshiDice. Of couse, many old-time gambling sites like BitZino and Seals with Clubs have been providing alternatives to SatoshiDice all along, but in the opening months of 2013 the massive success of Erik Voorhees’ juggernaut has prompted dozens of people to come up with alternatives. We now have the roulette-style wheel games SatoshiCircle and most recently BitcoinSpin, the minefield Satoshi Karoshi, the SatoshiDice clone SuzukiDice offering half the fees of the original, and the lottery BitMillions, and new sites are opening practically every week." Continue reading →

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The Future of Weed: HIGH COUNTRY

"In HIGH COUNTRY, Motherboard heads to Denver--ground zero for cannabis legalization, and home to a booming tech sector in what could be called the SIlicon Valley of weed--to inhale the newest high-tech highs. We visit the key players scaling up this new green tech, wrap our heads around all the money to be made, crack open the confusing science of America's No. 1 cash crop, and smoke dabs." Continue reading →

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