Those that passionately advocate for political decentralization are often portrayed as fringe carpers whose ideas are entirely unworthy of consideration.

German pharma giant Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto is only one prominent case of leveraged buyouts (LBOs), which have been flourishing since the 1990s (see Figure). After Bayer has paid 66 billion dollars for Monsanto, the stock value of the merged enterprise has collapsed below Bayer’s pre-merger value. Bayer faces more than 10,000 US lawsuits over cancer allegations for Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides, which were foreseeable prior to the leveraged takeover. What is driving this LBO activity if not profitability?

Global LBO Deal Value

Yesterday’s terrible fire at the Notre-Dame Cathedral reminds us how quickly centuries of accumulated “cultural capital” can be destroyed. Oak timbers dating from the 1200s in the roof and spire were lost forever; some priceless stained glass windows appear to have suffered damage. As the saying goes, France is the heart of the West, Paris is the heart of France, and Notre Dame is the heart of Paris—and as such the sight of the iconic church ablaze makes an uneasy if simplistic metaphor for the decline of the West.  

One of the first lessons I give my economics students in the principles courses I teach or in my MBA classes is the famous Diamond-Water Paradox, or what economists historically have called the Paradox of Value. Why are diamonds more expensive than water? Why are professional athletes paid better than teachers or soldiers?

Canada’s federal government wants cigarettes to self-extinguish when we stop smoking them, believing this will reduce incidents of death and injury from fires caused by careless smoking. Thus, since 2005 the government has mandated the use of reduced ignition propensity (RIP) materials in the manufacture of all cigarettes.

In an election year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is suddenly neck deep in a corruption scandal that could cost him his job. The scandal stems from “ongoing fraud and corruption charges” against SNC-Lavalin (SNC), a large international engineering and construction firm based in Montreal. The charges are “linked to alleged dealings with the Moammar Gadhafi regime in Libya between 2001 and 2011.”

Getting Libertarianism Right. By Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Mises Institute, 2018. 126 pages. Introduction by Sean Gabb.

The title of Hans Hoppe’s wonderful new book has a double meaning. We need to get libertarianism right — to understand libertarianism correctly. How can we do this? By realizing that if we want a libertarian society, we need to embrace the values of the Right.

ABSTRACT: There is an avoidable tension in a recently presented argument against the income effect from the perspective of Austrian or causal-realist price theory. The argument holds that a constant purchasing power of money is a necessary assumption for constructing an individual demand curve for a specific good, and hence that price changes along the demand curve are by definition incapable of exerting a “purchasing power effect,” that is, an income effect in standard neoclassical terminology. Price changes are, however, never neutral to the purchasing power of money.