While it is perfectly clear that an individual capitalist or speculator may make losses on the stock exchange, it is very doubtful whether "society" can make such losses. The question with which we are concerned here is whether an individual's losses from domestic stock exchange transactions represent a loss to the society to which that individual belongs.
When individuals are not owners of resources, they are not able to assess their value; and when resources are publicly owned, their use will be systematically hasty and imprudent. When we realize that public ownership leads to systematic haste and imprudence, we get a hint that the inability of assessing the value of resources has deleterious consequences for most of us, with no one to blame except perhaps those who insist on keeping the institution of public ownership in force.
The American nation state has effectively served as the church of this religion in the United States. The American "Vatican" is Washington, D.C., also a unique governing jurisdiction within the boundaries of a nation-state, like its Roman counterpart. Led by its economic priesthood, the American government administers the affairs of the nation to achieve a secular salvation for all its citizens--the attainment of a new heaven on earth.
Athletics, like economics, is an endeavor of human action. While we can see scores and statistics, there is no true way to quantify how good or bad a team may be. Indeed, if the computer polls with their mathematical formulas were so accurate and useful, then one would hardly see the need for a championship game after all.
Contrary to popular thinking, economics is not about GDP or CPI or other economic indicators as such, but about human activities that seek to promote people's lives and well-being. So what are the tools that economists and financial experts utilize in their assessments of the economy? What is the basis of their framework of thought?
I am the first Englishman and the first professional philosopher to receive the Schlarbaum Prize. So it seems appropriate to begin by talking about the greatest English philosopher, John Locke.
The pessimistic scenario is not only that American businessmen, students, and tourists will forever fear to travel in any nation with a Muslim community. It could also mean disinvestment overseas, the further impoverishment of the developing world, a lasting world depression, a world split into major warring blocks, and police-state policies at home.
Government is far from the economy's savior. Rather, it is a parasite, a cancer, that eats away at the wealth of its citizens with its fiat currency, its many billions of dollars of expropriated wealth, and its multitudinous directives.
Economists of the Austrian School not only understood that markets can fail if measured by an unrealistic and unrealizable standard. Ludwig von Mises emphasized the "uncertainty inherent in every action."
In the real world, it is not enough to have demand for goods: one must have the means to accommodate people's desires.
