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The US is in the midst of yet another “debate” over the debt ceiling. In the twenty-first century, this is a ritual that Washington politicos and journalists go through every few years when the prospect of default and government shutdown is used as a way to hold Americans hostage until they cave to a debt-ceiling hike. I won’t bore you with the details of which politicians are voting against a higher debt ceiling this time around. Outside a tiny handful of principled eccentrics of the Ron Paul variety, virtually everyone in Washington favors more deficit spending.

In my article on the gold standard published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies back in May, I suggested that the destruction of the gold standard led to changing consumption patterns, specifically to a drop in the consumption of beef.