On May 11, in defiance of a government lockdown order, Elon Musk reopened Tesla’s car plant in Fremont, California, which elicited a negative reaction from Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard Law School:
One of the first things that the student of economics is liable to be tortured with when he turns to monetary theory is the equation of exchange. Based on a mechanistic understanding of the quantity theory of money, the equation purports to show the relation between the supply of money and the prices of goods. It is one of the foundational fallacies of modern economics.
Scandinavian welfare states continue to allure leftist onlookers across the world. The Nordic welfare model is marketed as a humane alternative to the cutthroat nature of Western capitalism.
With China facing its most severe economic contraction in decades, Beijing is resorting to infrastructure investment to shore up growth. Officials are claiming that this spending will have a transformative impact on the Chinese economy. But without reforms to the state sector, the transformation they are expecting will prove to be elusive.
Unlike Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises did not believe in natural rights. But he can be of immense help to many of us who accept the right of self-ownership and also accept a Lockean account of the initial acquisition of property.
Mises says this about natural rights:
