The Federal Reserve has presided over a steady erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power—by design. See for yourself using the government’s inflation calculator that begins in 1913, the year President Wilson signed the Fed into law. Its definition of “price stability” as a perpetual two percent rise in prices would have struck earlier generations as an admission of failure rather than a policy goal.
In Nation, State, and Economy Ludwig von Mises defines a nation as a people group who all speak the same language, even while understanding that shared history, culture, and ancestry contribute to national identity. Mises also distinguishes between nation and state, arguing that a nation is a self-aware community, while a state rules over them.
Joseph Schumpeter, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), offered a starkly realistic definition of democracy: it is not the rule of the people by the people, but “that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.” In this view, democracy functions as an elite contest, politicians and their coalitions vie for office, much like firms compete in a market.
The United States is rapidly heading toward a future that will require a decision from political authorities and elites of all types. The choice will be between peaceful radical decentralization—possibly including secession—on the one hand. On the other hand will be a ratcheting up of coercion and enforced “unity” to ensure political centralization.
When it comes to production, capitalism and socialism are often presented as constituting extremes of a spectrum of economic organization, where control over the means of production is either entirely in the hands of profit-seeking private owners (the capitalists) at one extreme or in the hands central planners (supposedly acting for the benefit of society according to socialists) at the other extreme.
[The Influence and Significance of Human Action After 75 Years edited by Joseph T. Salerno (Mises Institute, 2026; v +256 pp.)]
The Mises Institute held a conference in 2024 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the publication of Human Action in 1949; and, in the present volume, the papers presented at that conference have been published. The contributors to the book reflect the vast scope of the book about which they have written.
