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CAPITALISM: A type of economy based on -- (1) private ownership of most resources, goods, and other stuff (private property); (2) freedom to generally use the privately-owned resources, goods, and other stuff to get the most wages, rent, interest, and profit possible; and (3) a system of relatively competitive markets. While government establishes the legal "rules of the game" for capitalism and provides assorted public goods, like national defense, education, and infrastructure, most production, consumption, and resource allocation decisions are left up to individual businesses and consumers. The term capitalism is derived from the notion that capital goods are under private, rather than government, ownership (compare communism, socialism.
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FREE-RIDER PROBLEM A problem underlying the provision of public goods that occurs when a person consumes or benefits from a good without making payment. The free-rider problem is the primary reason that public goods are produced by governments. Because public goods are characterized by the inability to exclude nonpayers, once a public good is produced anyone, everyone, can consume without making payment, that is, get a "free ride." Voluntary payments like those occurring in markets will not provide enough revenue to pay production costs. The only way to finance public goods is to force free-riders, and everyone else, to pay through government taxes. The free-rider problem also applies to common-property goods.
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PINK FADFLY
[What's This?]
Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time wandering around the shopping mall hoping to buy either a birthday gift for your mother or a weathervane with a horse on top. Be on the lookout for telephone calls from former employers.
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This isn't me! What am I?
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John Maynard Keynes was born the same year Karl Marx died.
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"There's a very positive relationship between people's ability to accomplish any task and the time they're willing to spend on it." -- Dr. Joyce Brothers
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BJE
Bell Journal of Economics
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