[What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu. Dutton, 2026; x + 403 pp.)]

There is nothing new about the perils for peace and liberty which stem from the combination of monetary inflation and technological revolution. Indeed, we can find a prime illustration at the dawn of the modern age during the Northern Renaissance in Europe.

But first, towards better describing the peril, I urgently propose a new entry into the economics dictionary: techno-asset inflation. The definition is this: techno-asset inflation is found where monetary inflation and technological revolution interact to produce virulent asset inflation.

My wife and I recently took a four day road trip to the Hudson, New York area to see some gardens and a couple preserved homes. We stayed the first night in quaint Hudson, which lost to Albany by one vote to become New York’s capital. At one time it was a bustling whaling center, if you can believe it. We actually stayed in the Whaler Hotel and many shops and restaurants have the word “whaler” in their title. Nevertheless, today the town has lost most of its industry. There are a few decent restaurants and, for some reason, lots and lots of boutique furniture stores.

A previous article introduced and addressed the role of patents, monopoly, and cronyism in the beginnings of the telephone industry. This article will seek to explore the brief and imperfect era of freer market competition that followed the end of key Bell patents in 1893 and 1894 (1894–1906).

“An abandoned warehouse complex overlooking the Moroccan border in this tiny Spanish territory has become a squalid village, with hundreds of migrants...”

“There is one positive development: The American people, especially the younger generation, are beginning to recognize the corruption at the top of our country...”

The bottom is falling out of the Denver condo market, with sales falling to 2008 levels. Condo trends predicted single-fam trends in 2008, and may indicate the current trend also. 

[Editor’s note: this article is a selection from Chapter 81 in Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty and provides a look into Rothbard’s view of the French Revolution. Rothbard does not write extensively on the French Revolution, but provides a number of indications of his view in Conceived in Liberty, and also in Volume I of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought.]