3. Triangular Intervention
A TRIANGULAR INTERVENTION, AS WE have stated, occurs when the invader compels a pair of people to make an exchange or prohibits them from doing so. Thus, the intervener can prohibit the sale of a certain product or can prohibit a sale above or below a certain price. We can therefore divide triangular intervention into two types: price control, which deals with the terms of an exchange, and product control, which deals with the nature of the product or of the producer.
1. Price Control
The intervener may set either a minimum price below which a product cannot be sold, or a maximum price above which it cannot be sold. He can also compel a sale at a certain fixed price. In any event, the price control will either be ineffective or effective. It will be ineffective if the regulation has no current influence on the market price. Thus, suppose that automobiles are all selling at about 100 gold ounces on the market. The government issues a decree prohibiting all sales of autos below 20 gold ounces, on pain of violence inflicted on all violators.
2. Direct Effects of Intervention on Utility
2. Fundamentals of Intervention
1. Types of Intervention
WE HAVE SO FAR CONTEMPLATED a free society and a free market, where any needed defense against violent invasion of person and property is supplied, not by the State, but by freely competitive, marketable defense agencies. Our major task in this volume is to analyze the effects of various types of violent intervention in society and, especially, in the market. Most of our examples will deal with the State, since the State is uniquely the agency engaged in regularized violence on a large scale. However, our analysis applies to the extent that any individual or group commits violent invasion.
March’s economic report from the National Association of Credit Management dropped to the lowest it’s been this year. The combined index fell from 53.2 in February to 51.2 this month.
NACM economic Chris Kuehl had hoped the previous month’s reading was just a fluke and he noted that we are now at the lowest point since the recession. The report monitors a variety of positive and negative factors related to credit such as rejection of credit applications, accounts placed for collection, disputes, dollar amount beyond terms.
Last week, The Economist ran a piece on the rather uneven relationship between the monetary power of the Fed and that of other smaller countries, such as emerging markets.
1. Defenses on the Free Market
ECONOMISTS HAVE REFERRED INNUMERABLE TIMES to the “free market,” the social array of voluntary exchanges of goods and services. But despite this abundance of treatment, their analysis has slighted the deeper implications of free exchange. Thus, there has been general neglect of the fact that free exchange means exchange of titles of ownership to property, and that, therefore, the economist is obliged to inquire into the conditions and the nature of the property ownership that would obtain in the free society.
Power and Market: Government and the Economy
Lew Rockwell weighs in on the American state’s recent capitulation on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The Obama administration has been staunchly against the new institution, fearing it might fuel de-dollarization and some day compete with the WB and IMF. However, after numerous US allies decided to work with the AIIB, the US suddenly decided it could live with the AIIB.
