Given the reality that markets are self-regulating, how did the US economy (not to mention economies of other nations) become a morass of hundreds of thousands of state, local, and federal regulations that govern things to the minutest detail? Furthermore, why have we not seen a revolt of business owners and consumers alike, who ultimately pay the price for the modern regulatory state? The answer is both simple— and complex.
This dreadful election season will spew forth many promises by politicians to "lead us into the future." I can hardly think of a worse fate for any society than to be led into the future by the political class of gangsters, marauders, looters, and liars. Fortunately, they haven’t the capacity to lead whole societies anywhere. They are outclassed and outrun by trends in the world economy that are beyond the ability of the political class to control or direct.
With a Republican president running sky-high debts, unleashing wars, imposing protectionist trade edicts, and risking the nation’s financial future, sometimes it feels like the 19th century all over again, specifically the year 1861 and following. The 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a secession movement in the southern states. In December, South Carolina seceded, and other Deep South states soon followed. Interstate commerce was disrupted, and many northeastern banks suspended specie payments. The atmosphere was one of grave political and economic crisis. Many feared war; many feared the unknown.
Debt is an institution in American government, long established and widespread. A cursory glance at debt statistics will quickly show that there has been a lull in the truth about debt, namely, that it cannot grow indefinitely at the rate at which it has been growing—at least not without a serious revaluation of the dollar, something we are already in the midst of seeing.
A common accusation against the Mises Institute is that it is obsessed with tracing social and economic problems to the state, and, in doing so, it oversimplifies the world.
Before there was the Federal Reserve there was the second Bank of the United States (1817–1836). Since the late nineteenth century, historians and economists have lauded this institution for its salutary control over the currency, its regulation of the state banks, its prudent stewardship of the government’s funds, and its example of a fruitful private/public partnership in the field of central banking.
The Washington Post’s Jonathan Weisman recently scored a front-page story about President Bush that would have galvanized DC conservatives three years earlier if the same words had been written about President Clinton.
There is a fly in the ointment of economic recovery: a dollar that just won’t seem to stop its fall. The impression that this trend portends something ominous is bolstered by the inverse relationship of the dollar’s value on international exchange and the price of gold. As the dollar has fallen in the last year, gold has risen.
Traditionally in the US, the management of the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, or government, is brought to power by an election in which the majority vote attains dominion. Individuals living in such a democratic republic are mollified by blindly assuming that such a form of government is "rule by the people," as indoctrinated.
