For the past sixteen months, headlines have been broadcast across our televisions cautioning us that the elderly and vulnerable populations are most at risk of this life-threatening COVID-19 virus if we do not stop the spread. Despite the preventative measures, long-term care (LTC) homes have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. In Ontario, of the approximately nine thousand deaths in the province, 41 percent, occurred in these homes.
Plato, in his Republic, tells us that tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy. Historically, this process has occurred in three quite different ways. Before describing these several patterns of social change, let us state precisely what we mean by “democracy.”
Pondering the question of “Who should rule,” the democrat gives his answer: “the majority of politically equal citizens, either in person or through their representatives.” In other words, equality and majority rule are the two fundamental principles of democracy. A democracy may be either liberal or illiberal.
In the “German Democratic Republic” they tell the story about a weary old man who tries to gain entrance into the Red Paradise. A Communist Archangel holds him up at the gate and severely cross-questions him:
“Where were you born?”
“In an ancient bishopric.”
“What was your citizenship?”
“Prussian.”
“Who was your father?”
“A wealthy lawyer.”
“What was your faith?”
“I converted to Christianity.”
In many minds, “capitalism” has come to be a bad word, nor does “free enterprise” sound much better. I remember seeing posters in Russia in the early nineteen-thirties depicting capitalists as Frankenstein monsters, as men with yellow-green faces, crocodile teeth, dressed in cutaways and adorned by top hats. What is the reason for this widespread hatred for capitalists and capitalism despite the overwhelming evidence that the system has truly “delivered the goods”?
Lecture 6: The Production of Law and Order, Natural Order, Feudalism, and Federalism
The topic of this lecture is the production of law and order within a natural order. That is, the production of law and order without a state.
Lecture 5: The Wealth of Nations: Ideology, Religion, Biology, and Environment
Besides purely economic factors, such as the division of labor, money and capital accumulation, ideological factors also play a very important role in economic development and in the formation of societies. Ideological factors, in a way, even influenced such fundamental things as the attitude toward the division of labor in a given society, and in particular also the attitude toward capital accumulation, the desire to become wealthier or to be satisfied with low standards of living.
Hans Hoppe’s famous “argumentation ethics” has generated a great deal of attention among libertarians, and deservedly so. Has Hoppe produced an ironclad demonstration that people have libertarian rights? I don’t propose to contribute to that discussion on this occasion. Rather, I should like to focus on a preliminary issue. It is one to which Hoppe has also made an outstanding contribution, but it has been neglected owing to the fascination of argumentation ethics.
This week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave two days worth of testimony before Congress. As part of his testimony, he presented the Monetary Policy Report July 2021. With this week’s major economic news flow undoubtedly being that (price) inflation, as measured by the Labor Department, is on the dramatic rise, it’s easy to lose sight of the Fed’s “special topics” outlined in Powell’s report.
The report mentions:
