Mises Wire

If time preference is genetically built into humans, are they double discounting future goods? Does this mean people should stop trying to weigh time in their calculations?

The reality of mandatory shutdowns is that state and local governments are now in the driver's seat, and that means that state and local politics is what really matters.

James Bovard reports form Maryland, where the COVID-19 lockdowns have decimated employment and the rules only apply to powerless ordinary people. Cops and politicians can do as they like.

In a free country, doctors would be free to prescribe whatever drugs they wish to anyone for any reason. In fact, individuals should be free to buy drugs without a special government-required doctor's note.

Americans were once harangued by government "experts" about the need to slow down on highways in order to save lives. Few listened. Today, laws demanding everyone "stay at home" may suffer a similar fate.

Propaganda kills, but it also works. Many of the same tactics employed to destroy opposition to the Iraq War are being used today against opponents of lockdowns.

The possibility that someone might pose a threat to another at a future time is not sufficient reason to revoke a person's property rights.

Neither voters nor politicians watch the bureaucracy very carefully, so they respond as one might expect—advancing their own and their favorites' interests, at the expense of the public they are supposedly working for.

The state currently enjoys a vastly unbalanced share of the power within a society, such an arrangement is not in any way preordained, and the assumption that it must be betrays a narrowness of vision and a lack of historical knowledge.

There's now no difference between monetary policy and other government programs designed to prop up firms, industries, and other favored groups. The Fed is simply another government planning agency.