Elon Musk is at it again. The billionaire tech magnate continues to get richer and richer on the American taxpayer’s dime, highlighting the need to do as Murray Rothbard advised of reassessing the “partnership” of government and business.
Blue jeans have more in common with drugs than you might think.
One of the more consequential episodes in the history of crony capitalism occurred in 17th and 18th century France. Cheap clothing made from cotton was threatening the rich woolen, linen, and silk manufacturers, so they persuaded the government to ban it. In short order, government agents began spying into homes and coaches and reporting on anyone who dared to wear the new fabric. Thousands of violators of the ban were rounded up and either sent to prison or to ships as galley slaves, which was a death sentence.
[Clipping Note no. 95, Foundation for Economic Education (1959). Excerpted from Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.]
It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. The reason is that the bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. The answer consists in supplementing and correcting the half-truth with the other half.
The Secular Saints: And Why Morals Are Not Just Subjective. By Hunter Lewis. Axios Press, 2018. Vi + 435 pages.
Earlier this month, SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) which monitors global military spending, released its latest report. To no one’s surprise, the US topped the list, with more spending than the next seven biggest spenders combined.
The term capitalism is highly confusing. The definition is clear enough: the private ownership of the means of production (capital). But the implications are very different depending on one’s political or economic perspective. Both are right and wrong. Let’s take a look at them.
Politically speaking, private ownership of the means of production provides owners with power. Why?
Ours is a politicized age from the college campus to the corporate boardroom, a situation in which things that once were personal now are utterly political. The hard left now controls not only higher education, but also much of scientific research upon which the future of humanity as we know it depends.
It has been often said that our future rests with the next generation. If that is true, then it is a scary prospect.
The millennial generation (ages 18-34) increasingly sees itself, politically, as socialist. I personally know a couple of young men who declare themselves Marxists! Although that is frightening enough, remember the context in which it occurs:
