The Free To Choose Network Blog

Creative Destruction: Why the Old Makes Way for the New

January 29th, 2026FreeToChooseNetwork0 Comments

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter had a gift for memorable phrases. When he described capitalism’s relentless cycle of renewal as “creative destruction,” he captured something profound in just two words that initially seem to contradict each other. But there’s no contradiction. The term brilliantly encompasses both sides of innovation’s equation: the creation of something new and the destruction—or disruption, as we tend to say now—of what came before. And crucially, the order matters. Creation comes first. Destruction follows only when something better emerges to replace it. In our last post, we explored why innovation faces opposition and how it generates wealth …

Episode 258 – Political Polarization: What Caused It? Part Two (Podcast)

Today’s podcast is titled “Political Polarization: What Caused It? Part Two.” Recorded in 2022, Dennis McCuistion, former Clinical Professor of Corporate Governance and Executive Director of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance at the University of Texas at Dallas, with speaker and author Jim Cathcart, psychologist Dr. Terry Paulson, former chair of Amnesty International USA Chip Pitts, and author Robert Hall continue their discussion about America’s deep political polarization following the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election of 2020. Listen now, and don’t forget to subscribe to get updates for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.

Adam Guild on Why Your Team Is Your Entire Business

January 21st, 2026FreeToChooseNetwork0 Comments

Like every entrepreneur, you’ve heard “hire the right people” a thousand times. But when Adam Guild, founder of Owner.com, talks about team building, he’s describing a fundamental shift in how business owners should see themselves. Guild started Owner.com at 17, bootstrapping a restaurant marketing platform that survived COVID-19 by pivoting to online ordering in weeks. That scrappy survival mentality served him well early on, but it nearly became his limitation. Like many first-time entrepreneurs, he saw himself as the hero with employees as helpful sidekicks executing his vision. Then he encountered a quote from legendary investor Vinod Khosla that changed …

Why Innovation Always Faces Opposition

January 16th, 2026FreeToChooseNetwork0 Comments

“This time, it’s different.” You’ve probably heard some version of this lately. AI is going to eliminate jobs. Automation will make human workers obsolete. Unlike all those previous technological shifts, this one will actually leave people with nowhere to go. Except people have been saying “this time, it’s different” for centuries. And they’ve always been wrong. The Roman historian Pliny the Elder tells a remarkable story. A glassmaker came before Emperor Augustus with an invention—flexible glass that could be hammered back into shape after being dented or dropped. He demonstrated this “vitrum flexile” by throwing it on the floor before …

Episode 257 – Political Polarization: What Caused It? Part One (Podcast)

Today’s podcast is titled “Political Polarization: What Caused It? Part One.” Recorded in 2022, Dennis McCuistion, former Clinical Professor of Corporate Governance and Executive Director of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance at the University of Texas at Dallas, with speaker and author Jim Cathcart, psychologist Dr. Terry Paulson, former chair of Amnesty International USA Chip Pitts, and author Robert Hall discuss America’s deep political polarization following the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election of 2020. Listen now, and don’t forget to subscribe to get updates for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.

How Moral Hazard Inflated the 2008 Housing Bubble

December 22nd, 2025FreeToChooseNetwork0 Comments

In our last post, we explored how the 2008 financial crisis happened because policymakers thought they could manage the economy like a machine—setting interest rates, guiding lending, engineering outcomes. They couldn’t. The knowledge problem meant they were making decisions based on information they simply didn’t have and couldn’t have. But there’s another piece to this puzzle, one that’s just as important for understanding what went wrong: moral hazard. The term sounds technical, but the concept is straightforward. Moral hazard happens when someone gets to make decisions but doesn’t have to live with the full consequences of those decisions. When the …

Episode 256 – The Evolution of Socialized Medicine: Health Care Reform Today (Podcast)

Today’s podcast is titled “The Evolution of Socialized Medicine: Health Care Reform Today.” Recorded in 1994, Dennis McCuistion, former Clinical Professor of Corporate Governance and Executive Director of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance at the University of Texas at Dallas, past president of the American Medical Association and World Medical Association and author of Code Blue: Health Care in Crisis Dr. Edward Annis and Commissioner of the Texas Department of Health, board-certified pediatrician Dr. David Smith discuss the need for public health infrastructure, tort reform, and the role and effectiveness of government versus market-based solutions. Listen now, and …

Lisa Su On When You Should Bet Big On Talent

December 17th, 2025FreeToChooseNetwork0 Comments

Every entrepreneur faces this dilemma: You have a critical role to fill, and there’s a candidate who shows real potential. But they haven’t done this exact job before. Their resume doesn’t check every box. The safe choice would be to keep looking for someone with a perfect track record. What if playing it safe is actually the riskier move? Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, built one of tech’s most remarkable turnarounds by taking risks on people. Under her leadership, AMD grew from $4 billion to over $23 billion in revenue, with shares rising from $2 to $200. When evaluating candidates, …

Can You Really Manage an Economy Like a Machine? Let’s Ask 2008.

December 11th, 2025FreeToChooseNetwork0 Comments

“If we could just get the right people in charge, we could fix this.” It’s tempting, isn’t it? When the economy tanks and people lose their jobs and homes, wouldn’t it be better if smart, well-intentioned experts could just… manage things? Set the right interest rates, guide money to the right places, make sure loans go to people who can actually pay them back, stop bubbles before they get too big? This idea—that economies work like machines you can tune and adjust—shaped pretty much every decision that led to the 2008 financial crisis. There’s just one problem: economies aren’t machines. …

Episode 255 – The Controversy Over Affirmative Action (Podcast)

Today’s podcast is titled “The Controversy Over Affirmative Action.” Recorded in 1997, Dennis McCuistion, former Clinical Professor of Corporate Governance and Executive Director of the Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dalton Cross Professor of Law at University of Texas at Austin Lino Graglia, and former University of California Regent, businessman and activist Ward Connerly discuss the state of race-based preferences in education and employment. Listen now, and don’t forget to subscribe to get updates for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.