Prudence or Principle? A Critique of Carpenter
However much one may value Carpenter's book, then, it does not reflect a consistent noninterventionist stance.
However much one may value Carpenter's book, then, it does not reflect a consistent noninterventionist stance.
The change wrought by markets goes to the very core of the issue. It makes and breaks whole institutions, sometimes overnight. And it does so in a beneficial way for the whole, without blood and without the risk of unanticipated calamity.
If we understand that freedom is inseparable from sound money, we can embrace that too.
In short, the Galbraithian view of the business and marketing system makes little or no sense.
Mises would clearly see the solution to the fiat-money-generated world disequilibrium as a global return to a commodity-money standard with 100% reserve banking as the only monetary policy rule and a banking order that avoids the disequilibria generated by the politically motivated manipulation of the money supply.
It was the singular achievement of Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression to have demonstrated that the Great Depression was a crisis manufactured and prolonged by the attempts to stop an inevitable downturn.
If we want to avoid the next great depression, all such government interventions should cease.
Free-market advocates and economists must continue to struggle against these harmful economic myths.
If you do believe that they do more good than harm, consider the unseen costs. What kind of private alternatives are being crowded out by the very presence of the police?