Glossary
The words these essays keep circling back to, and what they mean. Each one links to the essays that explore it.
B
- Belief
- Something a person holds to be true. Beliefs are often inherited long before they are examined.
C
- Capitalism
- An economic system organized around private ownership of productive capital and markets.
E
- Economic Freedom
- The freedom to decide how to spend your time and money, where to work, and what to build.
- Externalities
- Costs or benefits of a transaction that fall on people who were not part of it.
G
- GDP
- Gross domestic product: the total market value of goods and services an economy produces in a period.
H
- Human Flourishing
- A life going well as a whole: secure, meaningful, and self-directed, not only comfortable.
I
- Intellectual Humility
- Being open to the possibility that you are wrong, and willing to find out.
M
- Markets
- A way of coordinating exchange and economic decisions through voluntary buying and selling.
- Meaningful Work
- Work that solves real problems for people and is worth doing, not only work that is paid.
- Mindfulness
- Paying attention to your own thoughts as they happen, without labeling or judging them.
O
- Opportunity Cost
- What you give up when you choose one thing over another: the value of the next best option.
P
- Private Ownership
- Individuals or firms, rather than the state, owning property, including the productive capital that creates wealth.
- Prosperity
- Being well off. The essays ask whether it means more production and consumption, or something broader.
S
- Sustainability
- Meeting needs today without using up the ability of the people who come after us to meet theirs.
T
- The Economy
- The whole system through which a society produces, exchanges, and uses goods, services, and work.
V
- Value
- What something is actually worth to people, which is not always the same as what it sells for.