4. Utility Ex Post: Free Market and Government
We have thus seen that individuals maximize their utility ex ante on the free market, and that they cannot do so when there is intervention, for then the intervener gains in utility only at the expense of a demonstrated loss in utility by his subject. But what of utilities ex post? People may expect to benefit when they make decisions, but do they actually benefit from their results? How do the free market and intervention compare in traveling that vital path from ante to post?
Mises Daily Weekend by Jing Jin:
In this interview, Jing Jin, Associate Dean at the China Economics and Management Academy in Beijing, discusses how Mises and Rothbard have affected her academic work, and how Austrian economics is gaining traction in China today.
In “Libertarianism vs. Liberty,” published in HuffPost on April27, Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute criticizes libertarians like Ron Paul who support a non-interventionist foreign policy. These evil people do not want to start a war with Iran. How can they fail to see, Schwartz asks, the “incontrovertible fact” of a direct threat to America’s survival?
Interviewed by WHUS in Connecticut:
Dr. Mark Thornton discusses what skyscrapers mean for the global economy, what causes and exacerbates business cycles, what the current economic landscape looks like, why people just aren’t saving money, and what the role and function of interest rates are.
With the creation of the BRICS bank and now the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the major economies of the world are hoping to lay the foundation for a multi-polar financial world beyond the unilateral control of the United States. Due to the enormous size of the US economy, coupled with the reserve status of the US dollar, the United States government has long been able to achieve strategic and military goals through flexing its financial power.
At the time of their publication, Hayek’s writings represented a significant split from Léon Walras’s theories of perfect competition and, generally, mainstream microeconomics. As Hayek explained, perfect competition is an economic model in which “we assume that state of affairs already to exist.” A certain competitive equilibrium is considered to be the goal to reach.
David Stockman is our guest this week on Mises Weekends in the first of a two-part interview. He is also speaking at our Mises Circle event in Stamford, Connecticut, next week, along with Jim Grant and Judge Andrew Napolitano (watch for free at Mises.org/Live).
Additional links:
Mises Daily Friday by Ryan McMaken:
Even if the global warming lobby is eventually able to prove their case for the existence of global warming, that would still do nothing to prove the necessity of their plan for global economic controls, and thus, the impoverishment of billions.
