War is the ultimate government intervention. It is the excuse for all kinds of evils to be imposed on the governed. From confiscation through taxes and inflation to restriction of freedom of speech and the redirection and even nationalization of whole industries, nothing increases state power such as war.

Corporations are frequently accused of moral indifference. Critics often portray large firms as institutions that pursue profit while ignoring the consequences of their actions. Such criticism rests on a simplistic view of how businesses actually behave. In practice, many corporations demonstrate that economic incentives do not eliminate moral judgment. The recent dispute between the United States government and the artificial intelligence company Anthropic illustrates this point clearly.

Public debate usually treats Mises’s Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth as a Cold War claim that “government is inefficient.” That is too shallow. Mises’s deeper point—first made in 1920—was that an economy without genuine market prices for the means of production cannot calculate which uses of resources are more or less valuable.

[Money, Sound and Unsound by Joseph T. Salerno (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010; xxvi+ 616 pp.)]