Housing has become one of the most politically charged economic issues in Spain. Rising rents, the difficulty of finding available apartments, and the increasingly delayed transition of many young people into independent living generate understandable frustration. When access to an essential good becomes difficult, the temptation quickly arises to identify a visible culprit: landlords, property platforms, investment funds, speculators, or simply “the market.”
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Zhao Ziyang, Zhu Rongji, and the Limits of the Chinese Market Reform under the Communist Party Rule
The death of former mainland Chinese premier Zhu Rongji on August 12 has renewed discussion of his economic legacy. Zhu, who served as premier from 1998 to 2003 after previously overseeing much of mainland China’s economic policy as vice premier, was one of the principal architects of the market-oriented reforms of the 1990s. He restructured state-owned enterprises, strengthened the central government’s fiscal capacity, promoted housing reform, and used mainland China’s accession to the World Trade Organization as a means of exposing domestic firms to greater competition.
Continue readingPolitical Correctness: Voluntary Respect or Politically Enforced Conformity?
Political correctness has become one of the most controversial concepts in contemporary Western societies. Ironically, much of the debate begins before any substantive discussion even starts, because people rarely agree on what the term actually means.
Continue readingAn Economist’s Reflections on the Recent Eviction Case Involving an 82-Year-Old Woman in Madrid
In recent days, the temporary suspension of the eviction of an 82-year-old woman in Madrid has attracted considerable media attention. As an economist, I believe cases like this deserve careful analysis based on the facts, rather than solely on the emotions they inevitably provoke.
Continue readingEntrepreneurs, Not the State, Are the Driving Force of the Market Economy
In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises made a claim that remains deeply unsettling to statist thinking even today: the true driving force of the market economy is not the state, not bureaucratic planning, and not public authority—but entrepreneurs. This assertion is not rhetorical. It is a theoretical conclusion rooted in the logic of human action, the functioning of the price system, and the irreducible uncertainty of the future.
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