Mises Daily

Bankruptcy is a normal part of economic life, covered by laws that guarantee stockholders will be compensated as much as possible.

The state punishes those who do good (those who provide services that customers are willing to pay for at a price they are willing to pay) and rewards those who do evil (those who use the coercive power of the state to prevent people from entering the marketplace and earning a living).

And so it happened that Birmingham became "emphatically the town of 'free trade'," where practically no restrictions, commercial or municipal, were known" (Timmins 1866, p. ??), and where the notion of free trade was even to be extended, however briefly, to the nation's coinage.

"The enemies of capitalism and economic freedom … use the accusation of 'laissez faire' as a kind of ratchet for increasing the government's power."

They want to abolish private control of the means of production, market exchange, market prices, and competition. But at the same time they want to organize the socialist utopia in such a way that people could act as if these things were still present. – Ludwig von Mises

The consequences of inflation, higher taxes, and more regulation that result from government bailout plans, however, are sure to make losers of us all.

Hamiltonian mercantilism is essentially the economic and political system that Americans have lived under for several generations now.

Money passing back and forth from the amorphous fiscal blob in DC and listed corporations is as difficult to follow as a shell game.The public is expected to sit blinking like a corporate mistress in a James Thurber cartoon.

Austrian school capital theory and business-cycle theory are the best I have found.

By practicing plumbing without a license, Joe is bucking the system in a truly heroic way.