Mises Daily

Suppose that a convincing orator should go on TV tomorrow, and urge the public: "The banking system of this country is insolvent."

The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration.

The fully satisfied individual is purposeless, he does not act, he has no incentive to think, he spends his days in leisurely enjoyment of life. It is certain that living men can never attain such a state of perfection and equilibrium.

The rulers of that period had far-reaching powers over the activities of their subjects, while individual liberties were largely submerged.

The Morgan-Rockefeller forces began to organize a "reform" movement to cure the "inelasticity" of money and to move slowly toward the establishment of a central bank.

The attack on the principles of the Rule of Law was part of the general movement away from liberalism which began about 1870. It came almost entirely from the intellectual leaders of the socialist movement.

In the 20th century, the US regime started refusing to recognize other regimes that failed to pass a morality test. But what was "moral" was never clear since FDR enthusiastically supported the blood-soaked Soviet regime under Stalin.

Much of the media discussion around the 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall will focus on American military politics and the politicians of the time. But to truly understand why the Soviet system in Eastern Europe collapsed, we must look to Mises's pioneering work on economic planning.

Murray Rothbard defines the phrase free market: "a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents."

"It may well be, that is, that the Bolsheviks had never had the slightest idea of what their aims would mean concretely for the economic life of Russia, how those aims would of necessity have to be implemented, or what the consequences would be."