Other Schools of Thought

The socialists cannot help admitting that capitalism has the tendency to improve the material conditions of mankind. But, they say, it has diverted men from the higher and nobler pursuits.

Key methodological differences between Austrians were highlighted in Milton Friedman's "The Methodology of Positive Economics." A key piece of conflict: Friedman's focus on prediction rather than explanation.

One day, the Institute publishes an article criticizing Republicans. The Left cheers, but the Rights denounces us. The next day we criticize Democrats and the Right cheers while the Left is enraged. Yet our position is always consistently against the state. 

The impossibility theorem, developed by Nobel-winning economist Robert Mundell, paints a false tradeoff between the free movement of capital, fixed exchange rates, and effective monetary policy. Under a gold standard, all three are a possibility.

Ross Benes offers a fascinating look at how and why we have allowed politicians to alienate us, and a hopeful call for a less political America.  

One day, the Institute publishes an article criticizing Republicans. The Left cheers, but the Rights denounces us. The next day we criticize Democrats and the Right cheers while the Left is enraged. Yet our position is always consistently against the state. 

By keeping the population in a state of artificially heightened apprehension, the government-cum-media prepares the ground for planting specific measures of taxation, regulation, surveillance, reporting, and other invasions of the people's wealth, privacy, and freedoms. 

"The few independent thinkers who have the courage to question these dogmas are virtually outlawed, and their ideas cannot reach the reading public. ... 'progressive' propaganda and indoctrination has well succeeded in enforcing its taboos. "

The intrusion of politics into the field of economics is simply an evidence of human ignorance or arrogance, and is as fatuous as an attempt to control the rise and fall of tides.

As Mark Thornton has shown, the big legislative change that FDR made at the start of his presidency, the decision that affected every single American citizen from one coast to the other, was the repeal of the thirteen-year hell of Prohibition.