Any discussion of “stakeholder capitalism” must begin by noting a paradox: like “neoliberalism,” its nemesis, “stakeholder capitalism” does not exist as such. There is no such economic system as “stakeholder capitalism,” just as there is no such economic system as “neoliberalism.” The two antipathetic twins are imaginary ghosts forever pitted against each other in a seemingly endless and frenzied tussle.
The unbacked paper money system is an economically and socially destructive system—with far-reaching and harmful economic and social consequences beyond what most people would imagine. Fiat money is inflationary; it benefits some at the expense of many others; it causes boom-and-bust cycles; it corrupts the morality of society; it will ultimately end in a major bust; and it leads to overindebtedness.
Sometimes people claim the free market is unfair to future generations. Mises says again and again that capitalism is a system of “mass production for the masses” directed by the “dollar-votes” of consumers, and the consumers he is talking about are people who now exist. These people will act to secure their interests, but what about those who come after them? Don’t we have to consider the time “when like our sires, our sons are gone,” in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s phrase?
[Chapter 1 of Rothbard’s newly edited and released Conceived in Liberty, vol. 5: The New Republic: 1784–1791.]
[This is the fourth lecture from Mises’s Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow.]
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Almost immediately after his inauguration, President Joe Biden began creating new government dictates via executive orders. Many of these executive orders concern coronavirus, fulfilling Biden’s promise to make ramping up a coronavirus-inspired attack on liberty a focus of his first one hundred days.
The violent protest at the US Capitol on January 6 has long been over, but the upcoming Biden administration’s response to it is likely to do greater violence to the US Constitution and the rule of law than anything the worst of the protesters could have accomplished. Thanks to the response of the George W. Bush administration and Congress to the 9/11 attacks almost two decades ago, Joe Biden’s prosecutors will have plenty of legal ammunition to go after their political enemies. It won’t stop with prosecuting people who broke into the Capitol.
Over the past year, as violence has erupted in cities across the United States and even in the Capitol building in Washington, DC, partisans have routinely insisted that looting, vandalism, terrorism, arson, beatings, and murder are “false-flag operations.” By this is meant that agents provocateurs have infiltrated one side’s ranks and have behaved badly on purpose, for the sake of damaging the reputation of the group that has been compromised. The end goal is to delegitimize a rival group and, ultimately, have it suppressed by the state.
