The Free Market

It’s time that we question the very foundations of this war on recession. The recession is a regrettable but inevitable backlash against a boom that was not justified by the fundamentals.

The problem for free-market economists is that their policy recommendations at the dawn of recession are not too sexy to the political mindset. They involve either doing nothing to hinder price adjustments, or actively removing extra-market barriers to price adjustments that already exist. This often involves short-term pain in exchange for long-term solutions, when politics rewards short-term solutions that result in long-term pain.

One of our gravest problems is that we find ourselves confronting the armies of bureaucrats who already control us, and who have a vested interest in keeping and expanding the controls they were hired to enforce. . . .

We libertarians have our work cut out for us.

The state is the most destructive institution human beings have ever devised—a fire that, at best, can be controlled for only a short time before it o’erleaps its improvised confinements and spreads its flames far and wide.

Whenever the public doesn’t get what it wants and consumer demand is subservient to corporate interest, the most likely culprit is government policy. On the free market, consumers drive production, whereas under a system of protectionist corporatism, politicians and bureaucrats guide the market.

After the Great Depression hit, there was a general air in the United States and Europe that freedom hadn’t worked well. What we needed were strong leaders to manage and plan economies and societies.

And how they were worshiped—disgustingly so!

The solution to the crisis in higher education is to take the government out of the equation.

However horrendous we might find the mass shootings at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and other places, the fact is that when disaffected people start planning mass mayhem, the lack of a gun will not stop them.

For most people, economics has ever been the “dismal science,” to be passed over quickly for more amusing sport. And yet, a glance at the world today will show that we pass over economics at our peril.

If there is one thing I am passionate about, it is passing on to the next generation the baton that Murray Rothbard a while ago passed on to me and my contemporaries.

Building wealth, not manufacturing money, is the key to prosperity.

There is nothing inherently slimy about trading real estate, and certainly nothing warranting the state’s regulation of this market.

The poor are able to acquire household items that in some cases no one, rich or poor, could have had even a generation ago, and on terms that no one else is willing to extend to them.

My goal with these fifth graders was not just to introduce them to the basics of economic science, but to inoculate them against future attempts to teach them bad economics. By showing them that trade, money, savings, competition, and prices all have distinctly human origins and purposes, I hoped to help them make better sense out of the “economics” they will some day be exposed to.

The first Republican governor in Maryland in 35 years “celebrated” his victory by imposing the largest property tax increase in the state’s history. Ignorant Maryland voters still believe that voting Republican is a vote against Big Government!

What the UAW has done, on the foundation of coercive, interventionist labor legislation, is bring a once-great company to its knees.

Murray Newton Rothbard (1926–1995) was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.

I consider it as a very good sign that, while 50 years ago, practically nobody in the world had the courage to say anything in favor of a free economy, we have now, at least in some of the advanced countries of the world, institutions that are centers for the propagation of a free economy.

Today’s college students may never learn the principles of supply and demand, or understand how many billions of dollars companies like Wal-Mart save American consumers (including their own families), but they are indoctrinated as freshmen that any “moral” person should hate “outlaw” corporations (as defined by the union movement).

The free market and the free price system make goods from around the world available to consumers. The free market also gives the largest possible scope to entrepreneurs, who risk capital to allocate resources so as to satisfy the future desires of the mass of consumers as efficiently as possible.