Is enacting anti-discrimination legislation the answer to social media de-platforming?

In Human Action , Ludwig von Mises identified two patterns for the realization of socialism. The first, which he called “the Lenin or the Russian pattern” is “purely bureaucratic. All plants, shops, and farms are formally nationalized.” The second pattern, Mises said, is “the Hindenburg or German pattern,” and Mises claims that this was the means by which the Nazis established socialism in Germany.

Mises goes on to describe what this pattern of socialism looks like:

When politicians and bureaucrats fail to deliver what they promise — which happens a lot — we’re often told that the problem can be solved if only we get the right people to run the government instead. We’re told that the old crop of government agents were trying hard enough. Or that they didn’t have the right intentions. While it’s true that there are plenty of incompetent and ill-intentioned people in government, we can’t always blame the people involved. Often, the likelihood of failure is simply built in to the institution of government itself.

What if you found out that the Chinese are burying dollars under the Great Wall of China? What would your reaction be? Would you be upset that the Chinese weren’t spending those dollars on U. S. exports, narrowing Americans’ balance of trade deficit with China? Judging by the anti-Chinese sentiment characterizing public discussion of Chinese-U.S. economic relations these days, I suspect you would.

Venezuela is the fifty-seventh country to encounter hyperinflation in modern history. The economist Steve Hanke estimated — using the doctrine of purchasing power parity (PPP) — that the country’s monthly inflation exceeded 50 percent for more than thirty days in November 2016.

This week is the 100th anniversary of President Woodrow Wilson’s speech to Congress seeking a declaration of war against Germany. Many people celebrate this centenary of America’s emergence as a world power. But, when the Trump administration is bombing or rattling sabers at half a dozen nations while many Democrats clamor to fight Russia, it is worth reviewing World War One’s high hopes and dire results.

I met Daniel Lahoud in Rosario (Argentina) in 2008. He had submitted a very interesting paper to the International Conference I organize every two years – “The Austrian School of Economics in the 21st Century.” From then on he had participated in every Austrian Conference with the exception of 2014. That year the economic situation in Venezuela was so awful that he could not make it.

In his writings, Professor Milton Friedman blamed central bank policies for causing the Great Depression. According to Friedman, the Federal Reserve failed to pump enough reserves into the banking system to prevent a collapse in the money stock.

In “How Capitalists Created a “War on Waste”,” Chris Calton did an excellent job of laying out how the “profit motive encourages the natural reduction of waste,” without requiring government coercion. Selling part of the output of a productive process that would otherwise be thrown away or require costly disposal is as much a source of profit as any other way of increasing revenue or decreasing costs. Further, he illustrated the power of those positive environmental incentives with multiple striking examples.