In a 1964 article in the Yale Law Journal titled The New Property Charles Reich argued that “government largesse” is an increasingly important source of wealth and should thus be understood and regulated as a new form of property. Reich argued that “Property is a legal institution, the essence of which is the creation and protection of certain private rights in wealth of any kind” and that “Property is not a natural right but a deliberate construction by society.”

The seventy-fifth anniversary of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action invites us to ponder on Mises’s scholarly achievements and how the economic mainstream has not yet caught up to his advances in economics. Like Jesus Huerta de Soto points out in his preliminary study to the Spanish version of the thirteenth edition of Human Action: few are the treatises on the side of the mainstream that even try to match what Mises does in Human Action.

The city of San Antonio’s Status on Poverty Report was released recently, and the response was predictable. “I just want . . .

Last night, Brazilian fighter Renato Moicano went viral after his victory over JalinTurner at UFC 300, giving a shout-out to Ludwig von Mises himself.

I love America, I love the Constitution...I want to carry...guns. I love private property. Let me tell you something. If you care about your...country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school.

The full clip is available here, with some colorful adult language included.

The words of Lewis Carroll are often cited in reference to the culture wars and the redefinition of words whose meaning used to be regarded as plain.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Two books have recently been published on post-2007-2008 financial crisis history. The first is The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy by Christopher Leonard and it is my favorite of the two. Mr. Leonard describes the post-crisis financial environment extremely well in a way that is consistent with Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT) without naming it.

“Fast thinking” is a corrupting short-cut in mental processes which the late Daniel Kahneman identified by experiments in financial decision-making. Fast thinking plagues the market-place as it responds to the new threat of responses to Fed-led inflation. That threat had emerged even before the post-pandemic inflation starting in late 2022 cooled from its peak levels.

We are taught from a very young age; “Government works for you”, or “the Government is the embodiment of the populous.” We accept these slogans blindly and carry on day to day. However, reality does not match up with these catch phrases. This is painfully clear when looking at the incentives that face these officeholders. After examining just a few, it’s clear we ought to adopt slogans that align with reality like, “the Government works for themselves.”

The Prophets of Doom
by Neema Parvini
Imprint Academic, 2023; 227 pp.