About the project
Better disagreement begins with intellectual honesty.
Economic discourse has become saturated with undefined terms, invented opponents, moral intimidation, and causal stories that would collapse if anyone asked “compared with what?” This archive names and examines that failure.
Editorial position
Economic Demonology is written from an unapologetically market-liberal perspective. It takes private property, voluntary exchange, individual liberty, open competition, and constitutional limits on political power seriously.
That does not mean defending every business, every market outcome, or the existing distribution of privileges. A capitalist who seeks subsidies, protection from competition, regulatory favors, bailouts, or political power over rivals is not vindicating markets. He is evading them.
The same standard applies to labor organizations. Voluntary collective action is an exercise of liberty. Exclusive representation, compulsory support, restrictions on alternative bargaining, or political privileges are exercises of legally granted power and must be examined as such.
Nor does the archive claim that markets solve every problem. Externalities, public goods, asymmetric information, monopoly, collective-action problems, and institutional failure are economics—not refutations of economics. The serious question is which feasible institutions perform best under the relevant conditions.
What every case file promises
- The exhibit will be preserved and linked in context.
- The actual claim will be stated before it is criticized.
- Contested economic terms will be defined.
- The rhetorical operation will be identified precisely.
- Original sources will be preferred to inherited slogans.
- A serious alternative criticism will be stated when one exists.
- Arguments—not private motives—will receive the verdict.
Edited by Michael Rizzo
Economics is not about the money. It is about the institutions through which imperfect people coordinate, cooperate, conflict, choose, and live together.