Ludwig von Mises rejects the standard arguments for democracy. Not for him are the alleged virtues of public deliberation. For him, there is only one argument for democracy that is convincing. He says that only democracy allows for a peaceful change of power. Every government, he thinks, rests on popular consent. If a sufficient number of people find the government no longer tolerable, it won’t be able to maintain itself in power. In a democracy, people in this situation can peacefully replace the government with an opposition party more to its liking.

In a recent speech by Governor Lael Brainard called The Future of Retail Payments in the United States, she was able to combine the covid narrative with the payment system the Fed launched a year ago, noting:

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the urgency and importance of delivering a resilient instant payment system that is accessible to all Americans.

Last week, the Trump administration announced it “is weighing a new rule that would temporarily block an American citizen or legal permanent resident from returning to the United States from abroad if authorities believe the person might be infected with the coronavirus.”

Austrian school economists know that unsound money has been at the heart of disastrous government policies since time immemorial. The greater the ignorance of money, the greater the monetary debasement in order to fund government’s latest folly.