Jeffrey Tucker
AIER Editorial Director – 2017-2021
Jeffrey A. Tucker served as Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research from 2017 to 2021.
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A Second Passport, to an Island Paradise, Does Sound Pretty Sweet
It’s not at all surprising that with the highly politicized environment of the US, with ever more controls, more people are looking for new ways to live a peaceful life. It only takes one visit to a paradise like St. Kitts to get the mind turning toward dreams of a new start, a life of…
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Why Unhealthy Food Is Cheap and Plentiful
If we had a genuine free market in food – and the market is doing its best with the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods – we would also likely see a greater alignment between what is affordable and what is actually good food for human consumption. It would be nice at least to be able to…
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The Sock Slider, It Turns Out, Is a Godsend
As it turns out, many people have needs that cannot be appreciated or discerned in advance by intellectuals. Many times, they cannot even understand them. This has been obvious since the late 19th century, when the socialist critique of the capitalist market underwent a huge shift. The Marxists had predicted that capitalism would impoverish the…
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The Strangest Twist Yet on Trade with China
The company ZTE (Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment) in Shanghai had employed as many 75,000, and does business in 160 nations, while relying heavily on importing American component parts and manufacturing cellphones and other digital equipment. The US Commerce Department came down hard on the company for dealings with North Korea and Iran. It fined the company…
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Beware the Friend/Enemy Binary of Politics
Markets require that people play nice. Give these same people a forum in which to argue politics and they become barbaric. Why is that?
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The Solution to City Transit Is Decentralized
The rise of the city scooter as part of the app economy is a fantastic example of how markets generate solutions in the face of intractable problems. The more people tool around on these wonderful scooters, the lighter the traffic, the cleaner the city, and the happier people are. Note that no central planner came…
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I, Tonya, and the Malleability of Class
It is a rare film for dealing directly with a topic that Americans talk about often but think about hardly any at all: class distinctions and the barriers they create to social and economic mobility.
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Five Reasons the Future Isn’t Here Yet
The interactions and feedback loops between invention, implementation, and full-on adoption is a fascinating process to watch. It can’t be gamed. It relies on something no one can control: the price system, human choice, resource tradeoffs, and case-by-case circumstances of time and place.
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Financial Freedom Means Learning to Love Uncertainty
It is the great presumption of public policy that some people with power, resources, and status can know what is true, and therefore what must be better. This is in contrast to the lowly actors in the marketplace who must deal daily with the problem of not knowing. To navigate life, to find profitable investment…
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The Miracle of Canned Tuna Salad
Here is what is so amazing. It all happens without any central direction from the top down. In fact, we can go further to say that it could not happen under central direction. No government bureaucrat made this possible. They only get in the way. You need owners, marketers, manufacturers, prices, markets, banks, millions of…
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•
A Second Passport, to an Island Paradise, Does Sound Pretty Sweet
It’s not at all surprising that with the highly politicized environment of the US, with ever more controls, more people are looking for new ways to live a peaceful life. It only takes one visit to a paradise like St. Kitts to get the mind turning toward dreams of a new start, a life of…
-
•
Why Unhealthy Food Is Cheap and Plentiful
If we had a genuine free market in food – and the market is doing its best with the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods – we would also likely see a greater alignment between what is affordable and what is actually good food for human consumption. It would be nice at least to be able to…
-
•
The Sock Slider, It Turns Out, Is a Godsend
As it turns out, many people have needs that cannot be appreciated or discerned in advance by intellectuals. Many times, they cannot even understand them. This has been obvious since the late 19th century, when the socialist critique of the capitalist market underwent a huge shift. The Marxists had predicted that capitalism would impoverish the…
-
•
The Strangest Twist Yet on Trade with China
The company ZTE (Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment) in Shanghai had employed as many 75,000, and does business in 160 nations, while relying heavily on importing American component parts and manufacturing cellphones and other digital equipment. The US Commerce Department came down hard on the company for dealings with North Korea and Iran. It fined the company…
-
•
Beware the Friend/Enemy Binary of Politics
Markets require that people play nice. Give these same people a forum in which to argue politics and they become barbaric. Why is that?
-
•
The Solution to City Transit Is Decentralized
The rise of the city scooter as part of the app economy is a fantastic example of how markets generate solutions in the face of intractable problems. The more people tool around on these wonderful scooters, the lighter the traffic, the cleaner the city, and the happier people are. Note that no central planner came…
-
•
I, Tonya, and the Malleability of Class
It is a rare film for dealing directly with a topic that Americans talk about often but think about hardly any at all: class distinctions and the barriers they create to social and economic mobility.
-
•
Five Reasons the Future Isn’t Here Yet
The interactions and feedback loops between invention, implementation, and full-on adoption is a fascinating process to watch. It can’t be gamed. It relies on something no one can control: the price system, human choice, resource tradeoffs, and case-by-case circumstances of time and place.
-
•
Financial Freedom Means Learning to Love Uncertainty
It is the great presumption of public policy that some people with power, resources, and status can know what is true, and therefore what must be better. This is in contrast to the lowly actors in the marketplace who must deal daily with the problem of not knowing. To navigate life, to find profitable investment…
-
•
The Miracle of Canned Tuna Salad
Here is what is so amazing. It all happens without any central direction from the top down. In fact, we can go further to say that it could not happen under central direction. No government bureaucrat made this possible. They only get in the way. You need owners, marketers, manufacturers, prices, markets, banks, millions of…