Think Locally, Act Globally
To put it simply, those who truly want social progress should promote the idea that we should all think locally as individuals and act globally through the capitalist system. This is the creed of the true progressive.
To put it simply, those who truly want social progress should promote the idea that we should all think locally as individuals and act globally through the capitalist system. This is the creed of the true progressive.
So when Henry Paulson argues that it is necessary to pump money into credit markets to prevent them from freezing up, he doesn't bother to realize that the money he pumps into the credit markets is coming directly out of the very same credit markets.
A demand for monetary freedom — a repeal of legal-tender laws and the opening up of the banking system to private enterprise — is nothing more than the extension of freedom generally.
Really smart guys (and now gals too) built impressive models that were quite rigorous in some respects, yet woefully deficient in others. In the case of economics, this hubris led to horrible government policies. We can only hope the same doesn't happen because of the climate models.
Those of us not receiving the new money will be crowded out of the market only to see the prices of our purchases rise and our planning and value of our savings dissipate as it takes more and more money to do in the future what we could today have done for less.
The law of comparative advantage tells us that no matter how much more productive they are than the rest of us, even people who are very productive can be made better off by trading with people who are not.
Bernstein's book takes us outside the here and now and helps us understand the big picture, and he does this by looking at the details of goods traded in lands far away in all times.
Economics is not about goods and services; it is about the actions of living men.
A return to sound money is needed. This would, as outlined by many Austrian economists, require putting an end to government's monopoly over monetary affairs.
The modern, subjectivist theory of prices does not assume that people have "perfect knowledge" of the market.