The Free Market

It was 1934, and government-caused mass unemployment supposedly was being solved by a near mass takeover of the economy by that same government. However, "Do you have a job?" was not the only important question that Uncle Sam had for his subjects. He also wanted to know, "Are You Training Your Child To Be Happy?"

"The trouble with socialism," Oscar Wilde once wrote, "is that it takes too many evenings." Indeed, the private lives of socialists are highly politicized. They must not be interested in anything-not even their families-other than socialism. The theory must inform every aspect of their lives, which must be a microcosm of a socialist society: there must be no escape from the All-Embracing Theory. Or the All-Embracing State.

What's behind this new less-work-for-the-same-pay legislation is the 11.4 percent unemployment rate in France, a jobless rate that's been steadily expanded by the piling on of excessive labor regulations, government-mandated benefits and overblown taxation. The miracle here, if we're to believe the French socialists, is that an unemployment crisis that's been caused by too many government regulations will now be solved by yet another regulation.

A common misconception in popular thinking about business is that companies need to be helped along and supported by government. If a community fails to help business, it is said, it will miss out on jobs and prosperity. We see this happening across the country. Cities use public funds to build sports stadiums and arenas. States issue bonds and provide tax incentives to large corporations to entice them to locate in specific areas. Politicians then turn to the community and campaign for reelection based on bringing home the corporate bacon. This legal plunder is disguised as "urban renewal" or "community development."

From the 1930s through the 1980s, government claimed it could innovate better than private markets. That' s what the boondoggles like TVA, Nasa, and Semitech were all about. Hardly anyone believes that anymore, so the rationale for government regulation of technology has changed. It now concerns such vagaries as fairness and wise resource use.

Poverty, welfare and reason.

Thank goodness this bloody century, the era of communism, national socialism, fascism, and central planning-in short, the century of government worship-is coming to an end. May we use the occasion to re-pledge our allegiance to human freedom, which is the basis of prosperity and civilization itself, and to repudiate every ideological force that opposes it.

Proper liberals feigned shock and disgust when the NAACP released the results of a poll showing that 50 percent of young people believe that racial separation is fine so long as different races have "equal opportunities." The poll, co-sponsored by the NAACP and Zogby International, surveyed more than 1000 people between the ages of 18 and 29. An earlier survey found similar results.

Once again, the federal government is scrambling to make good on its own past mistakes. And private industries are facing massive costs, and potentially massive lawsuits, because of their attempt to keep up with federal regulators' changing whims. The controversy over Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE) shows once again that government's heavy-handed approach to environmental problems guarantees not solutions, but a continuing mess for which government will again posit itself as a solution-a clear example of Ludwig von Mises's theory of intervention.

Austrian economists should revel in the story of Ukara, a small, Tanzanian island in Lake Victoria. John Reader, in his astoundingly detailed and fascinating work, Africa: A Biography of the Continent (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), presents among a wealth of other information that should be of genuine interest to economic scholars a little over three pages (beginning at 255) of highly persuasive refutation of the statists' cry for central planning to protect against deadly "sprawl."

During the 1980s, just as the free market's reputation was beginning to rebound, the guardians of the national psyche discovered "workaholism." The victim of this disorder was defined as working compulsively, spending far too much time at his occupation, too little with friends or loved ones. He loses the capacity to enjoy what little leisure he allows himself, and eventually cannot even recall the point of his own frenetic activity. We were all advised to ease up, slow down, and smell the roses.

At some point, and nobody knows when, the stock market is going to reverse its climb. It may even collapse. It is interesting to speculate on what kind of political response that would generate. Given the politics of entitlement and the propensity of the Fed to intervene, the picture looks pretty grim.

Garet Garrett wrote in 1932, "Mass delusions are not rare. They salt the human story." Indeed, mass delusions are no more apparent than in the realm of public policy and especially in the faith people have in their government to carry out functions designed to promote the public good. How else to describe the persistent belief that government is a good steward of resources of any kind?

Even when the market produces amazing new technology, it can become a basis for criticism. There are two main excuses used today to justify intervention in the technology market. The first argues that manufacturers build a planned obsolescence into their designs. The second argues that a path dependency subsidizes some firms artificially at the expense of others.

Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota, took a position that is extremely rare in state government. He said that neither the state nor the city nor any other unit of government should spend any money on funding yet another municipal ballpark or providing a taxpayer subsidy to professional ball teams and their media flunkies. "The taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for new stadiums," said Ventura.

If we really want to take an opinion poll on taxes, the easiest way would be make them non-mandatory for one year. Give everyone the choice of paying them or not paying, with no penalties or rewards either way. What would happen? Washington would quickly have to close up shop.

The politics of discrimination have been a major force for statism for decades. Only recently have some politicians yielded to public pressure to pull back from their absurd enforcement of quotas.

This year marks the 250th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greatest of all German writers and poets and one of the giants of world literature. In his political outlook, he was also a thorough-going classical liberal, arguing that free trade and free cultural exchange are the keys to authentic national and international integration. He argued and fought against the expansion, centralization, and unification of government on grounds that these trends can only hinder prosperity and true cultural development

Despite this formidable record of ethnic engineering, not until Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright commenced bombing Kosovo (in order to save it) was there an opportunity to import refugees (created by US imperialism) at taxpayer expense to the United States. The Clinton administration had originally announced that it would bring 20,000 of the Kosovars to the US, but Milosevic capitulated before the full contingent could be moved. Add that to his war crimes.

As the bureaucrats pursue their Draconian war on drugs, the Clinton administration is conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry to provide drugs at taxpayer expense. Under the guise of expanding Medicare—already a massive wealth transfer from young to old—prescription drugs will be included among the benefits the feds use to further rope senior citizens into the government orbit.