University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer gave a lecture to a group of university alumni in 2014 entitled “Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault,” essentially predicting the Russo-Ukrainian war. The lecture has over 24 million views.
An old joke expresses one of the most common criticisms of the free market. “What is the most beautiful word in the English language? Cash.” The free market, it is alleged, has no place for values that have no price in money. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto offer a classic statement of this point of view:
The US government today likes to pretend that it is the perennial champion of political independence for countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain. What is often forgotten, however, is that in the days following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Washington opposed independence for Soviet republics like Ukraine and the Baltic states.
Politicians thoroughly enjoy times of war. Periods of bellicosity are when the most power-hungry members of the political class indulge in their most depraved political fantasies. The Russo-Ukrainian War has been no exception to this trend.
Western politicians have been taking advantage of the largest conventional military conflict on European soil since World War II to crack down on civil liberties at home and drag their countries closer to an open conflict with a nuclear power. The domestic measures Western governments have pursued have been particularly breathtaking.
Elon Musk’s bid to take over Twitter and turn it into a private company has apparently been successful. Now the real action begins. Musk’s buyout exposes the Big Digital media complex to unwanted and unwonted competition, while threatening to loosen its near-total control of information and opinion. Twitter has represented a vital component in an information configuration that has barred competitors and participants from the digital sphere by means of progressive criteria, including wokeness, political fealty, and obedience to official state dictates and narratives.
“Inflation” is on everyone’s lips. Commentators and politicians are quick to point out the perpetrators. It is said that climate change is the cause of rising prices or that a specific war maker is to blame. A popular opinion holds that inflation is rising because the costs are rising—ignoring that costs are prices, too.
In this interview with Scott Horton, Scott talks with Ryan McMaken about free markets and free trade. They begin with a discussion about the role of the Mises Institute in the push for sound money. Scott then asks McMaken about the nuances of debating capitalism vs. socialism while living under a mixed economy. They then discuss the changing role of the United States in the world.
States, regardless of their constitution, are not economic enterprises. In contrast to the latter, states do not finance themselves by selling products and services to customers who voluntarily pay, but by compulsory levies: taxes collected through the threat and use of violence (and through the paper money they literally create out of thin air). Significantly, economists have therefore referred to governments—i.e., the holders of state power—as stationary bandits. Governments and everyone on their payroll live off the loot stolen from other people.
“Inflation” is back in the headlines, and a lot of nonsense is being said about it. Without much thought whether it makes sense or not, “inflation” is defined as a general rise in prices. Official statistics claim that the “price level” can be measured and its change calculated as the so-called inflation rate, there being almost no critical evaluation of the reliability of these numbers.
