Mises Daily

How Time and Uncertainty Can Make Us “Antifragile”

All work involves economic considerations, but there are unique aspects of repairing machines that deeply touch the core principles of economics which are inescapable for the troubleshooter.

Government officials talk about more entrepreneurship, but they pick particular firms, industries, or technologies, and give them subsidies and benefits. What entrepreneurs need is secure property rights, the rule of law, and sound money. The best government can do for entrepreneurs is get out of their way.

The state’s creation of patent and copyright interests doesn’t prevent innovations, but it does erect hurdles that discourage research. The “traditional enemies of innovation [are] inertia and vested interest,” factors contributed to by the government practice of giving inventors protection from competitors.

The Bernanke Fed followed Keynes’s advice. The way to avoid a new slump is to keep interest rates low for as far as the eye can see as a way to overcome a lack of “animal sprits” and thus sustain a quasi-boom. As long as inflation is low, no harm, no foul. In fact, as the thinking goes, more inflation might be beneficial.

A low wage constitutes a competitive advantage for less-skilled workers that serves to protect them from competition from more-skilled workers. In other words, a wage of $7.25 per hour for fast-food workers serves to protect those workers from competition from workers able to earn $8 to $15 per hour in other lines of work.

Japan suffers the universal results of high taxation and the wide variety of social problems that follow. No longer is one income enough to make ends meet. Government regulations make it difficult for new industries to compete against the established giants and most industries behave like state-owned enterprises.

The legal incentives created by prohibition lead to artificially restricted production, decreasing the supply, and causing the price to skyrocket. Prohibition transforms users into criminals by making their drug use a large financial burden, enticing many to commit real crimes. All of this is a disaster for the addicts.

The “public issues” of today are crucially dependent on an understanding of sound economics. Virtually every major “public” or “social” issue involves proposals for government interference with the market. That’s why it’s crucial for lovers of liberty to understand how a voluntary economic marketplace works, in order to explode the myths and lies of its enemies.

The notion that unpatented medical technologies are not feasible is historically false. The <em>British Medical Journal</em> challenged its readership to submit a list of the most noteworthy medical and pharmaceutical inventions throughout history. Only two of them have remotely <em>anything </em>to do with patents.