2018 was the year when, yet again, the socialist model proved its inability to generate benefits for a population. The example most discussed by the media was that of Venezuela. In a humanitarian crisis unprecedented in the Americas, this South American country is deteriorating every day, but it is not the only one. Another country in Latin America that is suffering the consequences of socialist authoritarianism, and leaving its economy at the edge of the abyss and its people in collective misery, is Nicaragua.

ABSTRACT: In this paper we try to wrestle with the triviality objection to the concept of the same good. If we define two resources as serving the same list of ends, then whether these items can be subsumed under the rubric of the “same good” revolves around how we conceive of ends. If ends are at least partly language-dependent, that is, the way of individuating ends depends on the level of generality with which we refer to them, then the notion of the same good seems trivial.

The Problem of Production: A New Theory of the Firm
Per Bylund
London: Routledge, 2016, 194 pp.

Mateusz Machaj (mateusz.machaj@uwr.edu.pl) is research fellow at the Faculty of Social and Economic Studies at Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem, Poland; and assistant professor at the Institute of Economic Sciences, University of Wroclaw.

The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs
John F. Cogan
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017, 513 pp.

Dr. Mark Thornton (mthornton@mises.org) is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and Book Review Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris isn’t the first historically significant church to go up in smoke. The Basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside-the-Walls — after standing for more than 1,400 years — was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1823. It housed the tomb of the Apostle Paul, and was a major basilica, second only to St Peter’s as a pilgrimage site. Thanks to a construction worker, the church was accidently set on fire. 

While Republicans continue to profess their opposition to socialism, their love of socialism is being demonstrated in the healthcare arena. Do you remember when they were campaigning for control over Congress and the presidency with full-throated calls to repeal Obamacare? Not anymore. According to an article in the Washington Post, Republicans have come to love and adore President Obama’s signature achievement as president.

[Editors Note: The following article is excerpted from Huerta de Soto’s Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, originally written in 2001]

The most characteristic feature of the business cycles which have followed World War II is that they have originated in deliberately inflationary policies directed and coordinated by central banks.

Institutionalism1 is used to ridicule the classical economists because they started with “Crusoe economics.” In the beginning a fisherman got the idea that he could catch more fish one day than he needed and then he could have some leisure time to manufacture fishing nets.