Category: Money

The owners of shares of stock in a company are often described as the owners of the company. The executive management of a company is generally described as having a fiduciary duty to increase the share price for the benefit of the owners. Indeed any action which causes the share price to go lower may…

There has recently been some more suggestions that the U.S. is going to run short on scientists and other technical people, and that the best way to solve this is to encourage students to study science and engineering. As a computer programmer, I am certainly in favor of encouraging students to study science. But if…

I occasionally run across someone who thinks that gold is the only real form of money. These people call dollars “fiat money” (or “fiat currency”), and argue that real money is based on gold. In fact, this makes no sense. All money is a social convention: money is something which people will normally accept in…

Globalization is the process of removing trade barriers around the world, so that everybody lives in the same unconstrained market. The arguments in favor of globalization are clear: trade barriers make the market less efficient. If I have to pay a tariff to sell my widgets in Switzerland, then my Swiss customers have to pay…