By the popular way of thinking, the determination of the prices of goods is summarized by means of supply and demand curves, which describe the relationship between the prices and the quantity of goods supplied and demanded.

Within the framework of supply-demand curves, an increase in the price of a good is associated with a fall in the quantity demanded and an increase in the quantity supplied. Conversely, a decline in the price of a good is associated with an increase in the quantity demanded and in a decline in the quantity supplied.

Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century
by Andreas Malm
Verso, 2020. 215 pages.

Some critics of the draconian lockdowns alleged to be needed to cope with covid-19 have claimed that these measures are merely preparatory steps to accustom Americans to centralized control. Once the covid-19 hysteria dies down, we will face permanent restrictions to deal with “climate change.”

Listen to  the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

Since at least as early as the 1960s, pundits and intellectuals of the conservative movement have employed a caricature of “classical liberals” as amoral hedonists who make an idol of freedom.

Modern observers might be forgiven for thinking that this critique has only been leveled against the people we now call libertarians—some of whom are the sorts of people who strip down to their underwear at Libertarian Party political conventions.

Escaping Paternalism
by Mario J. Rizzo and Glen Whitman
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020
506 pp.

David Gordon (dgordon@mises.org) is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. This review was originally published Jan. 2, 2020 as “Why Paternalists Keep Calling Us Irrational,” at https://mises.org/wire/why-paternalists-keep-calling-us-irrational.