For a long time, Marxists have blamed the private ownership of the means of production for impoverishing the masses. The gentrification of the Western proletariat then led the critics of capitalism to update their catastrophic scenario. They turned to rhetoric about the Third World and how the wealth of the countries of the North was fueled by the poverty of the countries of the South. But then this narrative collapsed as globalization made even the Third World better off than before.

Recently, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation permitting Briarwood Presbyterian Church to establish its own police force for its church and school campuses, which are used by 2,000 students and faculty, as well as 4,000 parishioners. The legislation is to take effect in the fall.

[Excerpt from “Public Goods and Private Solutions in Maritime History,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 7, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 3–27.]

Last month, 82 percent of Denver voters voted down Initiative 300, which would have overturned the city ban on camping in public spaces.

Harvard has been a leader in the economics profession for better or worse. In recent years the economics department has been viewed as relatively free market oriented where human action is seen as rational, research is guided by economic theory, and where markets work most of the time. Symbolically, the introductory undergraduate course was taught for many years by conservative economist Martin Feldstein and since 2005 by Gregory Mankiw, who could be described as a middle of the road Republican.

The state and its evils are but the shadow cast by public opinion, and this is why advocates for freedom and free markets put so much emphasis on education. We focus on spreading the arguments about the workings of the profit motive versus bureaucratic management, state monopolies versus free competition, international trade versus protectionism and so forth. But we also know that a libertarian is not made overnight.

I wrote five years ago about the growing threat of a wealth tax.

Some friends at the time told me I was being paranoid. The crowd in Washington, they assured me, would never be foolish enough to impose such a levy, especially when other nations such as Sweden have repealed wealth taxes because of their harmful impact.

Different members of the ECB state that effects of monetary policy on banks’ profitability have been “broadly neutral”.  Many also refer to papers defending that banks lend more under a negative rate scenario.

Here is a paper they use frequently trying to say that negative rates are good, do not hurt banks and makes them lend more: Why Have Negative Nominal Interest Rates Had Such a Small Effect on Bank Performance? (Lopez et al).