Production Theory

Recorded at Mises University 2001.

Rothbard covers the principles of demand and supply curves. Prices are at the seat of the whole system. Use the logic of reality. The most mobile labor force is teenagers. Over time, capital equipment per laborer increases. Real wage rates increase. Consumer prices decrease.

The negative stereotype of businessmen is as false as Marxist theory itself. While millions have, and continue to, suffer under Marxist or socialist economic regimes, entrepreneurs at work in the capitalist world invest capital, organize resources, develop new products, create jobs and make the world a better place for the millions that are affected by their energy and vision.

The Chinese "yellow peril" was the late nineteenth century menace. And today, write Cecil Bohanon and T.N. Van Cott, the menace is outsourcing. The Chinese and Indians are selling Americans things like computer software at bargain basement prices. But there is nothing special about outsourcing software technology. All that matters is whether the Chinese and Indians sell for less than what current American software producers could earn in their next most lucrative employment. If so, outsourcing enhances U.S. living standards.

All libertarians—indeed, all reasonable people—can agree that the state licensure of floral designers is absurd, and anyone but the most naïve will recognize an exam to become one as nothing but a state-enforced cartel. But, writes Robert Murphy, unless we realize that all government regulations are violations of liberty, which represent nothing but a dishonest means of gouging consumers, piecemeal lawsuits will never bring justice.

Economists talked blithely of privatizing Iraqi assets, writes Joseph Stromberg, without considering the bureaucratic implications of the method, the motivations of the public authorities, the long and disgraceful history of imposing a pre-set view of what constitutes a free market, and the reality that dividing up assets in a conquered country is probably contrary to international law. There are better ways to bring freedom to the world.

The government sets price its flu shot at zero and then wonders how to account for shortages. That's just the beginning of the long history of government errors concerning the flu, writes William Anderson. In the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, an estimated 500,000 Americans died of Spanish Influenza. The outbreak coincided with the last days and the immediate post-armistice days of World War I, with government actions guaranteeing that the flu would spread rapidly.

No, there are no economic agencies in this country like Gosplan, but the U.S. Government, as well as many state and local governments, engage in central economic planning all the same. As Bill Anderson tells us, in the end, it is still central economic planning and, not surprisingly, it does not work any better here than it did in the U.S.S.R.

By following U.S. Government policies from beginning to end, Bill Anderson writes, United and American airlines inadvertently aided those individuals who snuffed out nearly 3,000 lives through their vicious actions. Yet, we also know that to have thwarted those attacks would have turned some employees of United and American into felons.

The Economist magazine asked in a recent issue: "Why on earth can’t the world’s richest country ensure that Baghdad has water and electricity?" One might think that a publication dedicated to covering the world of markets would already know the answer. The US government is trying to solve economic problems in Iraq, including the provision of essentials like utilities, through military means. If guns and force could provide the essentials of life, the Soviet Union would have been a utopia.