The deflation-phobia of our elites is the rational reaction of those who profit from the privileges that our present inflationist regime bestows on them, and who stand to lose more than any other group if this regime is ever reversed in a deflationary coup. Perennial inflation is based on monopoly. Deflation brings in the fresh winds of the free market.
In the great debates of the period, it was said that Hayek had lost to the New Economics of Keynes and his followers. It was more precisely true that the Keynesians had won not by having better argument but force of government policy. The Misesians and Hayekians of the time decided that they would fight the battle of ideas and thus sprang up a host of institutions that would continue the work of liberty, despite all political impediments.
Bryan Caplan, in his widely circulated article, "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist," seemingly has questioned the Austrian contention that choice implies preference. If it can be shown that we choose based on indifference and not preference, the Austrians be shown to be wrong. But can this be shown?
Proponents of markets often note that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Many of the most interesting issues in economics derive from a lesser-known category of alleged market failure: so-called asymmetric information. The problem of asymmetric information is simple. Different people know different things about economic goods. However, rather than indicting a need for government intervention, asymmetries in information make the free operation of markets all the more important.
Given the economics of the cycle, writes Sean Corrigan, there are no easy choices. Standing the path of recovery are huge, perhaps unprecedented, imbalances, record indebtedness perched atop still-overblown asset prices, the ire of powerful vested interests, and a blind dedication to a whole pharmacopoeia of quack remedies and misdiagnoses.
Capitalism (the free economy) is constantly being criticized, and it usually comes down to opposition to, and resentment against, the merchant class. However, the arguments and examples that people use against business under capitalism are not only illogical but also inaccurate.
Gore's remarks come at a curious time, his party having suffered some terrible electoral defeats in the last election cycle. A proposal to create a Canadian-like system in Oregon was defeated 80-20 at the polls. Yet there are reasons why the socialist idea remains popular.
When intellectuals teach the children of nonintellectuals to hate their own civilization, and regard its achievements as acts of villainy, writes Steven Yates, they only invite waves of understandable anti-intellectual reaction.
For a few billion dollars, you might expect to be able to bribe some small third world country into cleaning up its act, to defend the property rights of its citizens, to provide a stable currency, and to establish a non-interventionist economic and foreign policy. Not so, writes Mark Thornton.
