Democratic institutions with protections for free speech and dissenting opinion are said to ensure a “marketplace of ideas” in which true and good ideas outcompete their lesser rivals, but this popular metaphor is grossly misleading. The field of economics, for example, is full of cases in which true ideas have lost favor or trailed falsehoods due to convenience or bias.

Justin T. Callais is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech University.
Alexander William Salter is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Associate Professor of Economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University.
Economic PolicyEconomistsEconomyFreedomPhilosophy and Religion
Other Independent Review articles by Alexander William Salter
Fall 2020 Malignant Monetary Monocentricity
Fall 2018 Space Capitalism: How Humans Will Colonize Planets, Moons, and Asteroids
Spring 2018 The Political Economy of Public Debt: Three Centuries of Theory and Evidence
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