The State’s Favorite Fallacy: The Cudgel in a Suit
When someone argues in favor of state control of economic processes, they are, by definition, presenting an argument based upon the ad baculum fallacy, the “appeal to force.”
When someone argues in favor of state control of economic processes, they are, by definition, presenting an argument based upon the ad baculum fallacy, the “appeal to force.”
Is the state necessary? In this week’s Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon follows Aeon J. Skoble’s argument that we can do without the state and finds there is much to like in Skoble’s logic.
Contrary to what the Modern Monetary Theory advocates and their Chartalist allies are claiming, the 1690 colonial Massachusetts issuance of fiat money did not create an enlightened moment in U.S. monetary history. Instead, it was a monetary bait-and-switch.
The radical classical liberals of the past were not so naive as to think that words on paper would prevent the abuses of the central state. Allowing the central state to have a monopoly on coercive power is always a mistake.
Like the Luddites of two centuries ago, pundits tell us to fear AI because it might put people out of work and create mass unemployment. But AI is not a threat to our jobs, unlike the regulation the government unleashes ostensibly to control AI.
The Duke Lacrosse Case would never have been a legal item had not the police and prosecutors of the case lied and broken the law on numerous occasions. Here is a small sampling of the lies they told.
We continue celebrating the centennial of the birth of Murray Rothbard, one of the greatest economists of the 20th Century and the Dean of the Austrian School of Economics.
In 2011, Paul Krugman infamously declared that the US could revitalize its slow economy if it were to prepare for an invasion of space aliens. Would the real presence of aliens, however, touch off an economic crisis?
The Austrian theory of the business cycle has many critics.
As recent history shows, there are few things more courageous for a president to do than face down the ever-accelerating, wealth-draining, conflict-amplifying warfare state in DC. Trump has decided to go in the opposite direction.