You know you have crossed into the Austrian light when you wake up one morning and everything has become clear. From that point forward, for the rest of your life, you realize that almost every societal problem you encounter, no matter how simple nor how complex, is usually something to do with involuntary coercion, threatened violence, or some other failure of state interference in the free market.
Last Friday saw the release of a bombshell jobs report, with headlines exclaiming that the US economy added over 250,000 jobs in July, far in excess of any forecasts. The reality was far more grim. Those “jobs” weren’t actually created by businesses – they were created by the statisticians who compiled the numbers, through the process of “seasonal adjustment.” That’s a bit of statistical magic that the government likes to pull out of its hat when the real data isn’t very flattering.
Libertarians enjoy accusing each other of blind devotion to their favorite ideas and thinkers. In fact, it almost seems like a major pastime in the liberty movement to make this charge, and to revel with others in self-congratulatory “gotcha!” moments directed toward members of the outgroup.
I find this state of affairs frustrating, all the more so because in many cases (and I assume everyone knows of at least a few examples) neither side is really interested in reaching an accord. The result is that both accusers and accused perpetuate disagreement and factional conflict.
Both before and after September 11, 2001, the FBI has considered “eco-terrorism” one of its primary domestic terrorism concerns.
The role of the economist—to point out the unsuitability of central planning as a means to attain the level of welfare all countries seek—Mises characterized as a “thankless task, [as] most people are intolerant of any criticism of their social and economic tenets… [and] do not understand that the objections raised refer only to unsuitable methods and do not dispute the ultimate ends of their efforts” (Mises 1944, i
David Gordon’s recent article regarding the late Murray Rothbard’s keen interest in handicapping political races shows that Rothbard was hardly bound up in a world of theoretical abstractions. But critics of Rothbard often claim that his supposed intransigence, his unwillingness to compromise on matters of libertarian principle, rendered him a less effective advocate in the real world.
Do you believe that a minority teenager, maybe a high school drop out, with very few job skills, has a right to work? Or do you believe that being low skilled, maybe so low-skilled that you can only command $8 or $9 an hour in the job market, means you should have this right taken away? Oddly enough, for the progressive left, those who claim to be the most compassionate in our society, have adopted the latter position.
The anarcho-capitalism that Murray Rothbard favored differed entirely from the American system of government, and he saw the State as a gang of robbers. It by no means followed from this, though, that he was uninterested in politics. Quite to the contrary, he was passionately absorbed in it.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released new data on labor productivity today. During the first quarter of 2016, labor productivity fell 0.5 percent, making the first quarter the third quarter in a row for falling productivity. Prior to the first quarter of this year, labor productivity had not fallen three quarters in a row since 1979 in the lead up to the 1980 recession and the 1981-82 recession.
It is well-known trivia that the original formula for Coca-Cola contained cocaine, but the lesser known history of Coca-Cola has other interesting components involving the government, cronyism, and the War on Drugs.
