A perfect storm is brewing in Europe, largely of its own making. The recent street protests in France—against the high cost of living and the poor school conditions—are the clearest expression yet of a country, and a continent, in crisis.

A development project can spend a decade and tens of millions of dollars, report success, and still teach the world almost nothing. The Millennium Villages Project is the clearest recent example. Launched in 2005 under the economist Jeffrey Sachs, it set out to prove that a large, coordinated package of aid could pull rural Africa out of poverty. What it proved instead is that aid has no built-in way of finding out when it is wrong.

a seminar on Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty. Dr. Wanjiru Njoya delivered five lectures: “Natural Law and Reason,” “Private Property as the Foundation of Liberty,” “The Right to Self-Defense,” “The ‘Just War’ Doctrine,” and “The Declaration of Independence and ‘States’ Rights.’” In these talks Dr. Njoya connected the major themes of The Ethics of Liberty to current events and to the destructive ideologies that are attempting to place egalitarianism and state power above individual liberty.

In my column last week, I argued against Richard Epstein’s utilitarianism, as discussed in his book Simple Rules for a Complex World (Harvard, 1995). This week, I’d like to discuss some of the many insights found in the same book.

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, the value of the US dollar has steadily fallen. Now it is a tiny fraction of what it was in the days of our great-grandparents. Americans for the past century have been subject to a boom-bust cycle fueled by monetary inflation. This has enriched the government and its friends while impoverishing the productive classes.