Other Schools of Thought

From An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume I. Pages 117-133 in the text. Narrated by Jeff Riggenbach.

In general, moreover, Keynesian proposals for "compensatory" policies follow Marxian socialism in seeking to force individuals to obey the rule, "From everyone according to his abilities, to everyone according to his needs." Arguments and theories used to support these proposals are essentially Marxian.

"In short, a striker is a man who says, 'I mean to get my living by doing this thing and no other thing as my share of the social effort, and I do not mean to do this thing except on such and such terms'."

The New Deal is the American manifestation of the worldwide trend which produced fascism, communism and British socialism. It results from the desire of man to escape individual responsibility, to lean upon the all-powerful state and to trade his freedom for the politician's promise of security.

Dionysius's modern counterpart not only has ministers to advise him but also professors of economics to explain to the public how the abundance in their pantries is improved by inflation.

I see a pattern there — a pattern that can mean slavery for free men everywhere if it is not broken.

Democracy may be a self-limiting disease, as civilization itself seems to be. There are thumping paradoxes in its philosophy, and some of them have a suicidal smack.

If an omnipotent authority has the power to assign to every individual the tasks he has to perform, nothing that can be called freedom and autonomy is left to him. He has only the choice between strict obedience and death by starvation.

Posner is — to the best of my knowledge — a magnanimous person with a genuine concern for the lives of millions of Americans, but his book, if heeded, will only exacerbate current conditions.

To avoid runaway inflation we must have the resolve and the will to cease the inflationary expansion of credit, and to force the Federal Reserve System to stop purchasing assets, and thereby to stop its continued generation of chronic, accelerating inflation.