Remedies for government failure must be radical in nature. Wishing and waiting for an "army" of Mr. Smiths or pre-Beltway Phil Gramm thinkalikes to arrive in Washington D.C. is naïve. Better public-sector outcomes must wait not upon better people but upon a better system that does not permit some to live at others' expense.
Michael Otsuka endeavors to combine two fundamental principles of political philosophy, usually considered polar opposites. In my view, his ingenious attempt does not succeed; but his failure has much to teach us.
Ludwig von Mises devoted much attention to methodology. Many people interested in Austrian economics turn from his discussions of the a priori and verstehen in bafflement and boredom. "Enough of these philosophical abstractions," they say; "what we want is economics". No greater mistake can be imagined if one wishes to understand Mises's work.
Every once in a while, the truth about government spending somehow leaks out in Washington, writes Gregory Bresiger. Reluctantly, another one of our hired help recently told the truth about how the relentless taxing, inflating and spending of our central government is leading our nation down the road to serfdom. He then recommended more serfdom.
The neoconservative clique and their partners have deepened the state's commitment to empire, but Republicans hold no monopoly on building empire in the recent history of our country. The Clinton regime, now seemingly forgotten except as a kind of Camelot II by the American Left, featured most of the same patterns of imperial conquest and domestic repression.
H. Scott Trask sums it up: on the one hand, they believed in fractional-reserve banking, generally following Adam Smith's currency and banking theories. On the other hand, they were resolutely opposed to government-issued paper money, fiat money, legal tender laws, inconvertible paper currency, and land banks. On the question of a national bank, they were divided.
How damaging would another round of protectionism be? With international relations already highly strained—thanks largely, if not wholly, to the unwontedly belligerent approach generally adopted by the current U.S. Administration in its dealings with others—the clear peril here is that a series of escalating trade disputes impairs the ability of flows of goods to discharge the existing financial burdens of debt service and repayment as they come due.
On Labor Day, Americans honor the often incredible contributions of its working men and women.
Airline security had been imperfect, but airlines were capable of improving, and had every incentive to do so. The industry could respond to real threats without creating unnecessary passenger inconvenience. But instead, Congress, with the blessing of the White House, short circuited the market process and created a new bureaucracy.
What's wrong with a futures market in terrorism? It is not a genuine market creation. A growing recognition of the superiority of markets over planning has created an unviable hybrid: the planned market, one created not by property owners but by the state and for the state. Planned markets bear a close enough resemblance to the real thing to fool even astute observers who are otherwise friends of genuine market forces.
