Why I Have Hope
Thanks to our bankrupt economic policies, faith in our regime will soon be shaken whether we like it or not. Fortunately, we don't need a majority to make some changes for the better.
Thanks to our bankrupt economic policies, faith in our regime will soon be shaken whether we like it or not. Fortunately, we don't need a majority to make some changes for the better.
Politics operates according to principles that would horrify us if we observed them in our private lives, and would get us arrested if we lived by them. The state can steal and call it taxation, kill and call it war.
The public has been successfully conditioned to view the use of cash as something suspicious. Meanwhile, thanks to growing pressure from government, private business now often considers cash to be more trouble than it's worth.
The United States is notable for incarcerating a very large portion of its population compared to other countries. Surprisingly, this may increase homicide rates and lead to enclaves of ex-cons which would help explain why so many homicide victims have criminal records.
Economists Robert Shiller and George Akerlof would have us believe that the market sells us things we don’t really want. That’s not true, but even if it were, the proposed solution — government — is even less likely to give us what we want.
Many advocates for free markets often mistakenly speak of "the market" as if markets by themselves somehow solve problems or provide incentives. Only people can do these things, and markets are just a means to an end.
Ludwig von Mises understood that, when it comes to the movement of capital and labor across the borders of nation-states, only the ideology of freedom and free markets can lead to peaceful and fruitful collaboration between states and societies.
Thanks to relentless government intervention, the economy in Brazil is in deep trouble. Anyone familiar with Austrian business cycle theory, however, could have predicted the current troubles long ago.