Free Market

If a regulated airline system did not "work," and a deregulated system seemed for a time to work well, what happens when the winds of data happen to blow the other way? In recent months, crowding, delays, a few dramatic accidents, and a spate of bankruptcies and mergers among the airlines have given heart to the statists and vested interests who were never reconciled to deregulation. And so the hue and cry for re-regulation of airlines has spread like wildfire. 

Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses. The arts and crafts of the good old days had catered almost exclusively to the wants of the well-to-do. But the factories produced cheap goods for the many. All that the early factories turned out was designed to serve the masses, the same strata that worked in the factories. They served them either by supplying them directly, or indirectly by exporting, and providing for them foreign food and foreign raw materials.

As long as bureaucrat-bashing remains sport royal, there is hope. But how much? Even now, confronting bureaucracy's relentless encroachments and entanglements, whoya gonna call? 

The press is resounding with acclaim for the accession to Power of Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Fed; economists from right, left, and center weigh in with hosannas for Alan's greatness, acumen, and unparalleled insights into the "numbers." The only reservation seems to be that Alan might not enjoy the enormous power and reverence accorded to his predecessor, for he does not have the height of a basketball player, is not bald, and does not smoke imposing cigars. 

The astute observer might feel that anyone accorded such unanimous applause from the Establishment couldn't be all good, and in this case he would be right on the mark. I knew Alan thirty years ago, and have followed his career with interest ever since. 

There are other worthy contenders, but three men stand out as great economists and freedom fighters in the Misesian tradition: Henry Hazlitt, W.H. Hutt, and Murray N. Rothbard.

A truism among free-marketeers is that collectivism is flawed because it flies in the face of human nature. But many writers on our side also ignore a key aspect of human nature. They write about politics and economics as if they were logic or mechanics. Pull lever X for output Y. Disseminate the evidence of capitalism's success and collectivism's failures, and the capitalist paradise, in time, will come.

A truism among free-marketeers is that collectivism is flawed because it flies in the face of human nature. But many writers on our side also ignore a key aspect of human nature. They write about politics and economics as if they were logic or mechanics. Pull lever X for output Y. Disseminate the evidence of capitalism's success and collectivism's failures, and the capitalist paradise, in time, will come.

I look back with special pleasure and deep respect on that giant of our age, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). How he shone in his students' lives and minds, gently schooling us in the meaning of human action and the free market. 

Mises demonstrated, as early as 1912, that no good can become a medium of exchange, much less a money, unless it has a previous non-monetary usefulness on the market. In short, money can only emerge as a commodity on the market, and cannot be imposed by the government, by social contract, or by various schemes of economists or other observers. Such plans have elsewhere been labeled correctly by Hayek himself as "constructivist." In short, media of exchange and therefore money can only arise "organically" out of market processes and cannot be imposed by outside schemers.

Under the surface, Poland is seething with anti-government ferment. And the works of Ludwig von Mises and his students are part of the reason—testimony once again to the potency of truth.