Legendary investor Jim Rogers has advocated buying farmland and agricultural commodities for years, but a recent Reuters article discusses the current struggles faced by farmers in a time of high rents and falling commodity prices.
In the Washington Times, James Bovard takes a look at how DC would have us believe that they’re suffering greatly at the hands of unreasonable people. To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi: We’ve already cut all the far to the bone. There’s nothing left to cut!
And yet:
Ryan McMaken writes today:
All goods need not be allocated in response to the human-choice-driven price mechanism of the marketplace. Goods and services can also be allocated by political means. That is, states, employing coercive means can seize goods and services and allocate them according to certain political goals and the goals of people in positions of political power. There is nothing “neutral” about this method of allocating resources.
From Richard Ebeling’s Column in Epic Times:
Consumers’ Sovereignty, and Natural vs.Contrived Scarcity
by Richard Ebeling
One of the great myths about the capitalist system is the presumption that businessmen make profits at the expense of the consumers and workers in society. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In terms of theatrical impact, the first performance of the Republican majority in the Senate responding to semi-annual testimony from Fed Chair Yellen was a dud. That is bad news for US monetary reform.
The root cause of the theatrical failure is that a winning strategy for monetary revolution has failed to emerge from the Republican ranks. Instead we hear the old tired messages about “auditing the Fed,” “changing the structure of the FOMC,” and adopting a neo-Keynesian rate-fixing “rule.”
Yet again, the government wants to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. According to the Obama administration and the FCC, it is necessary to regulate internet service providers so that they don’t interfere with people’s access to the web. The claim immediately prompts one to ask: Who is being denied access to the web?
I want to thank Professors Jeffrey Herbener and Shawn Ritenour for inviting me to give the Ludwig von Mises lecture at the Austrian Student Scholars Conference and for doing such a great job organizing the event. Dr. Lucas Engelhardt (a former Mises Summer Fellow) did a great job giving the Hans Sennholz lecture. I must also say that I was very impressed with the students’ paper presentations. I would also encourage other professor to encourage their students to participate in the event in the future.
