Why Economic Dependence on Others Is a Good Thing:

In public policy discussions, the words independence and dependence make frequent appearances. Given that American political ideology has in many ways been defined by the Declaration of Independence, Americans naturally think of independence as good and dependence as bad. As a consequence, arguments to implement government policies to reduce our dependence on others — dependence on “foreign oil” being the most common current manifestation — often find a receptive audience.

In 2001, the Mises Institute published Reassessing the Presidency The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom, by John V Denson, which examines the role of the US presidency in warmaking, police powers, and a variety of attacks on private property and human rights. Hint: the effect is bad.

This article is adapted from the foreword to Finance Behind the Veil of Money: An Austrian Theory of Financial Markets by Eduard Braun.

Lew Rockwell writes: 

Readers of this blog may remember previous posts about George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV adaptation, Game of Thrones. Over the past few years, libertarians have enjoyed writing about the series’ political and economic themes, and Carmen Dorobăţ and I have recently collected our writing into a forthcoming book chapter, available for free here.

Here are two very interesting journal articles on Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship. Peter Lewin’s characteristically thoughtful and careful treatment characterizes entrepreneurial opportunities as “the potential to create value,” a formulation that rightly emphasizes the uncertainty inherent in entrepreneurial action.