By: R.J. Moeller

Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. -Milton Friedman

There is no such thing as a completely "free" market. With no restrictions of any kind, there would be anarchy. So the debate between Right and Left, conservative and liberal, is one of degree, not form. In other words, almost everybody believes that the government has a role to play in our lives, and specifically in our economy, but to what extent?

America has succeeded where others have failed precisely because "we, the people" have believed in limited government and economic freedom. Truly, the principles behind the free market system the United States has generally employed for more than two centuries are unique and unprecedented in their ability to facilitate productivity and generate prosperity.

But how well can you explain the core tenets of the free market to your kids? Your liberal co-workers? To yourselves?

For all of the town halls and Tea Parties and grass-roots activism to mean anything, we must equip ourselves (and one another) with the truth and facts to stop the lame-duck economic arguments we've been hearing from the Left since Karl Marx.

There are, I believe, six primary concepts and ideas that one must grasp in order to understand the basic framework of "free market capitalism." They are: scarcity, property rights, division of labor, competition, rule of law, and morality.

Today we will begin a series entitled "Free Market Essentials" that is meant to help you in your efforts to re-claim this country for the principles of limited government, economic freedom, and personal responsibility. Our first concept is "Scarcity":

Scarcity- We live in a finite world. There is only so much of everything. This doesn’t simply pertain to oil or diamonds or beach-front property or even Kanye West’s talents. There are only so many hours in the days, people who can drive a 3-wood (and Cadillac SUV) like Tiger Woods, and jobs you can work at the same time. There are only so many people born to rich families who waste their un-deserved good luck, just as not everyone born into poverty overcomes great odds to play a piano like Ray Charles.

The miraculous nature of the human mind is such that we can apply our Creator-endowed talents to natural resources in order to produce many things that we would otherwise be lacking. But even to what we produce or engineer there is a limit to the amount of money we have to use to buy all of those equally limited goods or services.

Because scarcity is a reality, the world we live in is a world of trade-offs. This means decision-making abilities are paramount, and experience, although not infallible, becomes a prized asset. We all have to make value judgments every day about which products we want/need to buy, how much we will work, where we will live, and whom we will give charity to.

Some Left-of-Center ideologies would prefer to make most of your decisions for you, but then a society quickly learns how scarce things like freedom and liberty are in this world.

(Come read Part II where we discuss Property Rights.)