Several times recently, Gene Callahan has found himself engaged, directly or indirectly, in discussions about exactly what implications follow from the existence of human action, the foundation of economic science. The effort to draw out those implications is called praxeology.
The journalist's skill as an observer can only take him so far, if he is observing with the wrong theory in mind. As Thomas Friedman's "Theory of Everything" shows, without the distinction between power and market—the very core of the libertarian idea—a theory of everything can easily turn into a theory of nothing.
The merchant class has been the most reviled in the history of political thought. Their very existence sticks in the craw of those who, like Marxists and modern-day militarists, believe that history should be about great conflicts, and winners and losers. Why? Because the merchant class views history in a more mundane way: as a series of small steps by which people are provided the goods and services they need to overcome the great economic problem of scarcity.
In a free market, what a person is is determined by how well a person does. But it's different in state-controlled professions. You can be a great doctor but without the license to practice, you are guilty of a serious crime. The same is true in aviation and law. It is not enough to be good at what you do. You must jump through hoops held by politicians and bureaucrats.
In the same way that the advent of peace makes it easier to talk about the horror of war, a new technology that has changed the world of typing, making it possible to actually speak publicly about our wounds from typing class.
The measures of inequality on which analysts, policymakers, and armchair pundits typically lean may be misleading, argues Art Carden. Even when measures of real income tell us otherwise, the real differences in income and wealth generated by the free market may be much smaller today than they were 100, 50, and even 10 years ago. So maybe "inequality isn't growing fast enough" for some—it doesn't appear to be growing at all.
Shopping at a mall, joining a country club, or working for a business are not rights. Remember that before you get angry at not being able to stay at the mall, not being able to play golf at Augusta, or not getting hired because you don't look the part. In order for something to be taken from you or denied to you, it must be yours in the first place.
Some freedom-minded people pin their hope for liberty on withdrawing from an unfree world. We might refer to this as "economic secession." Despairing of advancing the cause of liberty in society at large, they hope to be able to secure their own liberty anyway. This approach is doomed to fail, write Paul Birch and Gene Callahan.
I expected better of John Milbank. He is a theologian of great distinction, the leading theorist of the influential Radical Orthodoxy movement. Would not so profound a thinker offer us illuminating ideas on economics?
Our age is dominated by the state and its errors. The state has given us recession and war, while liberty has given us prosperity and peace. Which of the two paths prevails in the end depends on the ideas we hold about freedom, capitalism, and ourselves. May we never forget the great truth: tyranny destroys, while liberty is the mother of all that is beautiful and true in our world.
